Sociology

Angry Politics examines the incivility pervading contemporary American politics, with a particular eye toward its manifestation among the youngest segment of the electorate.

Activists in the American abortion conflict are increasingly paying attention to the large but little-known network of pro-life “pregnancy centers” and other service providers offering “help” to pregnant women.

Bullying does not just affect children; adults do it and suffer from it too. It goes beyond the schoolyard into the corporation, the military, the police, the government, the family, and the media. In a society where wealth and power are unequally distributed bullying is institutional.

A lively cultural history of exercise in America, this book tracks the development of a new industry that gentrified exercise and made the pursuit of fitness the hallmark of a middle-class lifestyle.

Looking through the prisms of gender, race, and class, Herndon traces how the gospel of personal responsibility permeates American thinking about fatness and in the process often victimizes women and children.

A path-breaking book—the first to examine the evolution of community organizing in U.S. cities. While embracing mobilization, the contributors acknowledge the challenges inherent in globalization and the norms and values that shape contemporary American culture. Still, they reaffirm that community organizing has an important role to play as part of a broader progressive movement.

A dramatic look at the controversial 1989 Supreme Court ruling that the State of Wisconsin had not violated a young boy’s rights by failing to protect him from an abusive father. Though a legal setback for children’s advocacy, the decision brought attention to the issue of child abuse in America and reflected the tension between government's desire to protect its children and its anxiety over invading the sanctity of the family.

Compact, timely, well-researched, and balanced, this institutional history of Social Security's seventy years shows how the past still influences ongoing reform debates, helping the reader both to understand and evaluate the current partisan arguments on both sides.