Health Sociology

When Nina Collins entered her 40s she found herself awash in a sea of hormones. As symptoms of perimenopause set in, she began to fear losing her health, looks, sexuality, sense of humor - perhaps all at once. Craving a place to discuss her questions and concerns, and finding none, Nina started a Facebook group with the ironic name, What Would Virginia Woolf Do?, which has grown exponentially into a place where women - most with strong opinions and fierce senses of humor - have surprisingly candid, lively, and intimate conversations.

Twins Talk is an ethnographic study of identical twins in the United States, a study unique in that it considers what twins have to say about themselves, instead of what researchers have written about them. It presents, in the first person, the grounded and practical experiences of twins as they engage, both individually and together, the "who am I" and "who are we" questions of life. Here, the twins themselves are the stars.

Reputation touches almost everything, guiding our behavior and choices in countless ways. But it is also shrouded in mystery. Why is it so powerful when the criteria by which people and things are defined as good or bad often appear to be arbitrary? Why do we care so much about how others see us that we may even do irrational and harmful things to try to influence their opinion? In this engaging book, Gloria Origgi draws on philosophy, social psychology, sociology, economics, and more to offer an illuminating account of an important yet oddly neglected subject.

Imagine you are a hunter-gatherer some 12,000 years ago. You've got a choice - carry on foraging or plant a few seeds and move to one of those new-fangled settlements down the valley. What you won't know is that urban life is short and riddled with dozens of new diseases; your children will be shorter and sicklier than you are; they'll be plagued with gum disease and stand a decent chance of violent death at the point of a spear. Why would anyone choose this? But choose they did.

On Feb. 12, 2008, at E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, CA, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed his classmate, Larry King, who had recently begun to call himself "Leticia" and wear makeup and jewelry to school. Profoundly shaken by the news and unsettled by media coverage that sidestepped the issues of gender identity and of race integral to the case, psychologist Ken Corbett traveled to LA to attend the trial.

Retirement insecurity is an increasingly serious manifestation of the vast inequality that risks destroying the social fabric in America. The nearly inevitable consequence of lifetime wage discrepancies, security in retirement is linked to the kinds of jobs we hold during our work lives. That, in turn, is a product of all the forces leading to historic levels of inequality, forces that have protected the very wealthy, destroyed any hold on stability for the poor, and gradually eroded the security of the vast middle class.

From the author of The Epidemic of Empathy in Healthcare and The Good Doctor comes a book that explores how the persistent pandemic has revealed what excellence in healthcare truly means and presents an action plan to achieve it.

If you are tired of feeling sick and tired, now is your opportunity to take control of your health and unleash your natural healing potential with the resources and action steps you will learn in this book. Dr. Tim Smith, DC has made it his life mission to educate the public on the principles of real and natural health care for the transformation of people's health through the power of chiropractic and healthy living.

Experts and the general public are convinced that young people today are trapped in an extended adolescence - coddled, unaccountable, and more reluctant to take on adult responsibilities than previous generations. Nancy Hill and Alexis Redding argue that what is perceived as stalled development is in fact typical. Those reprimanding today's youth have forgotten that they once balked at the transition to adulthood themselves.

The Marvel of Martyrdom takes a broad perspective on self-sacrifice and martyrdom, bringing together religion, popular culture, history, psychology, and mythology. Stories of individuals both famous (Gandhi) and obscure (Rodrigo Rosenberg) intertwine with research on altruism, happiness, and radicalization to terrorism. The changing landscape of the book's setting - from The Roman Empire to 19th-century Russia to Nazi Germany to post-World War II India to present day Ukraine - makes the power of self-sacrifice and martyrdom come alive.

Challenging Operations takes up the apparent paradox of medical professionals resisting reforms designed to help them and their patients. Through vivid anecdotes, interviews, and incisive observation and analysis, Katherine Kellogg reveals the complex ways that institutional reforms spark resistance when they challenge long-standing beliefs, roles, and systems of authority. Shedding new light on the difficulty of implementing reforms, Challenging Operations offers concrete recommendations for effectively meeting that challenge.

Our obsession with praise and blame begins soon after birth. Totally dependent on others, rapidly we learn to value praise and to fear the consequences of blame. Despite outgrowing an infant's dependence, we continue to monitor others' judgments of us - and develop what relational psychologist Terri Apter calls a "judgment meter", which constantly scans people and our interactions with them, registering a positive or negative opinion.

The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban Blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. David Ansell has spent nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, and has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In

The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients.

Life and Death in Intensive Care offers a unique portrait of the surgical intensive care unit (SICU), the place in medical centers and hospitals where patients with the gravest medical conditions - from comas to terminal illness - are treated. Author Joan Cassell employs the concept of moral economies to explain the dilemmas that patients, families, and medical staff confront in treatment.

The Tall Book is a celebration of the tall-advantaged, which notes and explores the myriad benefits that come with living large - from the simple pleasures of being able to see over crowds at a parade, to the professional joys of earning more money, and having others perceive you as a natural leader. The Tall Book also offers well-researched explanations into the great unanswered questions of tallness, including: Why are people tall to begin with? How have tall people figured throughout history?

For more than 30 years, Hank Cardello was an executive and adviser to some of the largest food and beverage corporations in the world. For more than 30 years, he watched as corporate profits - and America's waistlines - ballooned: fattening consumers meant fattening profits. Now, in this fascinating and timely book, Cardello offers a behind-the-scenes look at the business of food.

Teen Spirit offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we came to be living in an age of political immaturity and social turmoil. Award-winning author Paul Howe argues it's because a teenage mentality has slowly gripped the adult world.

In 1964, American judge Potter Stewart famously said, ‘I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.’ Over 50 years later, the reverberations of these words are still being felt across the world. Be it proposed porn bans, religious morality or women’s rights, the assumption is that porn has a single, knowable definition. But one man’s art is another woman’s erotica is another person’s sex tape.

Sports fans, dads, and data analysts David Sikorjak and Ben Valenta argue that fandom can not only increase our sense of belonging but also serves as a powerful antidote to loneliness because sports fans experience increased social connection. What they didn't realize was how deep that connection was, the potential it carried for individual and societal wellness, or the opportunities it offered for adult friendships, making and keeping friends, and family ties.

Hoe bespaart een vliegje in een wc duizenden euro's aan schoonmaakkosten? Hoe zorgde een stipje ervoor dat duizenden Nederlandse studenten veel te veel geld leenden? En hoe scoren vrouwenversierders met behulp van drogerpluis? Als iets schijnbaar kleins ongemerkt grote invloed heeft op ons gedrag heet dat het bromvliegeffect. En het treedt veel vaker op dan je denkt.