Scott N. Brooks
Black Men Can’t Shoot
“Black Men Can’t Shoot is carefully observed, ethnographically rich, and conceptually sophisticated—an original work of importance that provides a powerful eye on the world of black ghetto youth today. A must read for anyone wishing to understand.”—Elijah Anderson, author of Streetwise
Read an excerpt.

 

Gaye Tuchman
Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University
“Wannabe U is an exceptional portrait of a state university that desperately wants to play in the big leagues. Tuchman illuminates how universities have not just borrowed tools from the business world but redefined them in ways that have had a far-reaching and pernicious influence on higher education.… No other book is as revealing about the revolution under way in American higher education as this one.”—Walter W. Powell, coeditor of The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook

 

Charles L. Bosk
What Would You Do? Juggling Bioethics and Ethnography
“Charles Bosk provides in these pages a rich and rigorous account of the ways in which medical ethics, ethnography, and social science illuminate the human condition. He is the finest ethnographer of his generation, and he offers to future generations a standard of ethnographic practice and reflection that is unrivaled in its appreciation of the nuances and complexities of making sense of people’s lives.”—Jonathan B. Imber, Wellesley College

 

Charles C. Ragin
Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond
“Redesigning Social Inquiry is aimed at social scientists looking to escape the banality of everyday quantitative research, and here they’ll find a sophisticated way out of all the by-the-numbers work. But this book also speaks to those of us who have a profound knowledge of cases and want to explore the implications of this understanding. With this rigorous yet accessible book, Charles Ragin has completed his mission to reorient social science.”—Edwin Amenta, University of California, Irvine

 

Robert R. Faulkner and Howard S. Becker
“Do You Know…?” The Jazz Repertoire in Action
“This book consists of a seamless blend of anecdotes and analysis, filled with delight and insight. Robert Faulkner and Howard Becker, writing from their twin perspectives of professional jazz players and renowned scholars, offer an unprecedented understanding of the interpersonal dynamics of jazz performance.”—Barry Kernfeld, editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz

 

Pierre Bourdieu
Sketch for a Self-Analysis
Sketch for a Self-Analysis is the ultimate outcome of Bourdieu’s lifelong preoccupation with reflexivity. Vehemently not an autobiography, this unique book is instead an application of Bourdieu’s theories to his own life and intellectual trajectory.

 

Megan Comfort
Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison
“Megan Comfort’s book on how a large correctional facility changes the behavior of women partners of prisoners is a tour de force. Doing Time Together is one of those rare studies with information and insights that are totally new and surprising. This well-written and engaging book will be widely read and could become a classic.”—William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears

 

Steven M. Tipton
Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life
“Much of the sense we have of ourselves, both as individuals and as a nation, derives from the teachings of mainline religious groups long at the vital center of American culture and now challenged from the religious right and secular left in ways never before experienced.… Steven Tipton’s magisterial book helps us understand their response to a crisis not only at the center of our religious life but at the center of American cultural history.”—Robert N. Bellah

 

David Grazian
On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife
“Drawing from hundreds of stories and years of fieldwork, David Grazian reveals how scenes are made, how the ‘girl-hunt’ works (not) and why some boys like coconut shampoo.”—Peter Bearman, author of Doormen
Read an excerpt.

 

Amy C. Wilkins
Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status
“With deft analysis and vivid ethnographic detail, Amy Wilkins maps the contours of three contemporary youth subcultures. Lucid comparisons of the tangled and often contradictory dynamics of gender, sexuality, class, and race—and of the emotional dimensions of each of these cultural worlds—make this a memorable book.”—Barrie Thorne, University of California, Berkeley

 

Matthew Desmond
On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters
“If you want a look behind the flames to see what drives these people to come back year after blistering year then read this book.”—John N. Maclean, author of Fire on the Mountain
Read an excerpt.

 

Mary Pattillo
Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City
“Pattillo is our generation's leading sociologist, taking up the mantle of Du Bois, Frazier, and Wilson to show how race and class play themselves out in the 21st century.”—Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
Read an excerpt.

 

Gary Alan Fine
Authors of the Storm: Meteorologists and the Culture of Prediction
“Authors of the Storm represents the work of a craftsman at the peak of his powers. Gary Alan Fine's book conveys in often amazing detail the work life of weather forecasters, laying out the patterns of their days and nights, the range of dilemmas they face, and the underlying organizational and political structures and tensions that shape their forecasts. This is a completely original book.”—Daniel Chambliss, Hamilton College

 

Ann Southworth
Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition
“In this fine book Ann Southworth paints a group portrait of these lawyers—business lawyers, libertarians, social and religious conservatives—and of their backgrounds, strategies, and conflicting ideas and aspirations. This is a really illuminating book. It is one the best studies of the legal profession I’ve seen in recent years. It is imaginative in concept and design. The reader comes away with confidence that he has been given a reliable and deeply insightful account of an important social phenomenon.”—Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School

 

Joseph C. Hermanowicz
Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers
“This fascinating longitudinal study of 55 academic physicists integrates insights from the sociology of occupations and professions, the life course, and science to illuminate the interplay of agency and structure as scientists navigate their careers. Lives in Science convincingly demonstrates that the subjective experience of scientists, including their aspirations, satisfactions, and disappointments, varies over the course of their careers in distinctive ways that parallel the rewards, opportunities, and constraints typifying their organizational contexts.”—Jeylan T. Mortimer, University of Minnesota