American Sociology

In this monumental book by one of the Church’s greatest contemporary defenders, Bill Donohue explains how the ruling class is systematically undermining the virtues that have built Western civilization and producing a “moral holocaust” that the traditional family cannot withstand.

The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented spiritual, technological, demographic, political and social transformation—moving from an older, mostly white, mostly Protestant, religion-friendly society to a younger diverse, multiethnic, pluralistic culture, where no one faith group will have the advantage. At the same time, millions of Americans are abandoning organized religion altogether in favor of disorganized disbelief. Reorganized Religion is an in-depth and critical look at why people are leaving American churches and what we lose as a society as it continues.

In her first book, The Presidency in Black and White, journalist April Ryan examined race in America through her experience as a White House reporter. In this book, she shifts the conversation from the White House to every home in America. At Mama's Knee looks at race and race relations through the lessons that mothers transmit to their children.

The Great Migration and the Democratic Party frames the Great Migration as an important economic and social event that also had serious political consequences. Keneshia Grant created one of the first listings of Black elected officials that classifies them based on their status as participants in the Great Migration. She also describes some of the policy/political concerns of the migrants. The Great Migration and the Democratic Party lays the groundwork for ways of thinking about the contemporary impact of Black migration on American politics.

At the 40th anniversary of King's assassination, acclaimed public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson gives a comprehensive reevaluation of the fate of America, specifically Black America. Ambitiously and controversially, he investigates the ways in which we as a people have made it to that Promised Land King spoke of, and the many areas in which we still have a long way to go.

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation’s diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a Black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.

From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery.

Your share of your health insurance premium and the amount you are paying for your yearly deductible, co-pays, and prescriptions are soaring. Don’t forget that your employer’s share of your premium is coming out of your salary. And unfortunately, you are not alone. What can you do to avoid unnecessary costs and encourage American healthcare reform? Ripped Off! is your guide to better understanding the problems of the American healthcare system and what you can do for yourself and how to help enact change.

A history of the activism and achievement of African American athletes from Jesse Owens to Serena Williams to Colin Kaepernick, who advanced the cause of social justice through their outspokenness, commitment, and integrity. Muhammad Ali refused to fight in a war he believed was immoral. Wilma Rudolph retired from track and field to campaign for civil rights. Taking a Knee, Taking a Stand tells their stories and the stories of other prominent African American male and female athletes who often risked their careers to fight racial discrimination and promote social justice.

From James Beard Leadership Award winner Saru Jayaraman, Forked is an enlightening examination of what we don't talk about when we talk about restaurants: Is the line cook working through a case of stomach flu because he doesn't get paid sick days? Is the busser not being promoted because he speaks with an accent? Is the server tolerating sexual harassment because tips are her only income?

US families have been pushed to the wall. At the bottom of the economic ladder, poor and working-class adults aren't forming stable relationships and can't give their kids the start they need because of low wages and uncertain job prospects. Toward the top, professional parents' lives have become a grinding slog of long hours of paid work. Meanwhile their kids are overstressed by pressure to succeed and get into good colleges.

Florida has long beckoned retirees seeking to spend their golden years in the sun, but, for many, the American dream of owning a home there was financially impossible. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called "installment land sales industry" appeared out of nowhere to hawk billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners. For only $10 down and $10 a month, working-class pensioners could buy a piece of the Florida dream: a graded homesite that would be waiting for them in a planned community when they were ready to build.

In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war.

In 1983 Chicago elected Harold Washington as the city's first black mayor. This is the story of Washington's improbable victory over Jane Byrne, heir to the late Richard J. Daley's political empire, and over Daley's eldest son. It's the story of a coalition outside the party's mainstream coming to power and ruling in the country's most political of cities. In Fire on the Prairie, Gary Rivlin reveals the personalities and philosophies of those who were at the center of events, from black separatists such as Lu Palmer to community organizers such as Jesse Jackson....

Un examen profundo de cómo el racismo ha roto el pacto social, erosionado el bien común y dañado las vidas de todos los estadounidenses; un análisis sincero de cómo estas profundas heridas pueden comenzar a sanar. Si se compara con otras naciones industrializadas, Estados Unidos está perdiendo terreno en casi todos los indicadores de bienestar social.

In Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America, Robin C. Sager probes the struggles of aggrieved spouses shedding light on the nature of marriage and violence in the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. Analyzing over 1,500 divorce records that reveal intimate details of marriages in conflict in Virginia, Texas, and Wisconsin from 1840-1860, Sager offers a rare glimpse into the private lives of ordinary Americans shaken by accusations of cruelty.

Mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse, inclusive, and intersectional communities that lie at the heart of American Buddhism. Be the Refuge is both critique and celebration, calling out the erasure of Asian-American Buddhists while uplifting the complexity and nuance of their authentic stories and vital, thriving communities. Drawn from in-depth interviews with a pan-ethnic, pan-Buddhist group, Be the Refuge is the first book to center young Asian-American Buddhists' own voices.

Just as the industrial capitalism of the 19th century gave way to corporate capitalism in the 20th, recent decades have witnessed corporate capitalism evolving into a new phase, which Ehrenreich calls "Third Wave Capitalism." Third Wave Capitalism is marked by apparent contradictions: Rapid growth in productivity and lagging wages; fabulous wealth for the one percent and the persistence of high levels of poverty; increases in the standard of living and increases in mental illness, and much more.

This insightful history explores the stereotype of Dallas Theological Seminary as an anti-intellectual stronghold of fundamentalism and dispensational premillennialism. The tenures of the schools five presidents reveal the tensions that DTS, a blend of differing heritages and of opposing traditions, has experienced amid changes in American religious and cultural life.

Guns, an American Conversation follows up on a handful of strangers - teachers and gun-rights advocates, hunters and police officers, mothers and fathers across the United States - brought together in a larger group of 150 people, for a monthlong moderated Facebook group chat. The goal of the project - which expanded on earlier efforts - was to foster a civil, yet honest, dialogue between people whose backgrounds and beliefs led them to have opposing views on the issue.