Showing titles in Sociology

Insightful, surprising and with groundbreaking revelations about our society, Everybody Lies exposes the secrets embedded in our Internet searches, with a foreword by best-selling author Steven Pinker. Everybody lies, to friends, lovers, doctors, pollsters - and to themselves. In Internet searches, however, people confess their secrets - about sexless marriages, mental health problems, even racist views.

In The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind, social theorist Gustave Le Bon gives historical insight into the political thinking of his era while offering timeless social commentary. Le Bon challenges the listener to contemplate how individual ideas change - often to a destructive end - when employed in a setting of groupthink. As technology and communications innovations make group formation easy and accessible for better or for worse, this book's message is certainly one that will not be lost in the crowd.

What is the secret of happy relationships? How do companies build collaborative cultures? What lies behind some of the greatest scientific and creative breakthroughs? The surprising answer is: conflict. Whether it's at work, at home or in public, confronting our differences is the only way to make the most out of them. How to Disagree is about how to do that successfully.

This “perfect balance of bold honesty and riotous wit” (Shelf Awareness) from the author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay explores Stefanie Wilder-Taylor’s journey to breaking up with alcohol for good. For Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, alcohol was the seasoning that could give almost any...

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

Paul Dolan shows us how to find pleasure and purpose in everyday life. As a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, Dolan conducts original research into the measurement of happiness and its causes and consequences, including the effects of our behaviour. Here he creates a new outlook on the pursuit of happiness - it's not just how you feel, it's how you act. Happiness by Design shows that being happier requires us to actively redesign our immediate environment.

In London, only those with vast cash deposits can get on the property ladder, private rents have spiralled out of control and the wait for social housing is measured in decades. Once vibrant communities are being uprooted, schools are closing down and homelessness is rampant. It was not always like this. Tracing the last forty years of housing policy, Peter Apps examines this transformation, following a diverse group of Londoners as their fortunes rise and fall across the decades amid the economic forces sweeping through the city.

Paris in the Belle Époque is remembered as a golden age of cultural flourishing and political progress. The period between the revolutionary 1870s and the outbreak of war in 1914 saw the modern French capital take shape: by day Parisians could admire the rising Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Coeur Basilica, while at night they roamed the Bohemian world of the Moulin Rouge. But as Mike Rapport reveals in this authoritative and beautifully written new history, City of Light, City of Shadows, beneath the elegant veneer Paris was at war with itself.

No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, “another world.” During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous for its freewheeling lifestyle characterized by courtesans, casinos, and Carnival.

“Excellent.”—The Wall Street Journal Since its publication ten years ago, businesspeople, investors, doctors, parents, students, athletes, and musicians at every level have adopted the maxims of Talent Is Overrated to get better at what they’re passionate about. Now this classic has been...

The Good Ally is an urgent call to arms to become better allies against racism and provides a thoughtful approach, centring collective healing, to do so. It is a book for those against persistent racial injustice, hungry to expand their knowledge and understanding of systemic racism in Britain and beyond. It uncovers the roots of racism and its birthplace, anti-Blackness.

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the...

Doctors are more than doctors. They’re detectives who solve mysteries about the human body. Diagnosing patients is about looking for clues, whether a persistent tickle in the back of the throat or confusion and memory loss. Just like detectives, good doctors sift through information until they arrive at the medical solution that fits best. Think you have what it takes to keep up with medical detective work? Find out with this second installment of Dr. Roy Benaroch’s thrilling look at medical mysteries from across history.

London, 1857: Two teenage girls holding a sign that says "Fugitive Slaves" ask for money on the corner of Blackman Street. After a constable accosts them and charges them with begging, they end up in court, where newspapers pick up their story. Are the girls truly escaped slaves from Kentucky? Or will the city's dystopian Mendicity Society catch them in a lie, exposing them as born-and-raised Londoners and endangering their safety? With its many accounts of people like these who lived and made their living on the streets, Vagabonds forms a moving picture of London's most compelling period.

'A magnificent, tender book' Independent 'Her words are brimful of love, grace and kindness' Guardian 'She writes with a tender, lyrical beauty' Sunday Times From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Your Life in My Hands comes this vibrant, tender and deeply personal memoir that finds light...

Despite its manifest failures, the narrative of neoliberalism retains its grip on the public mind and the policies of governments all over the world. By this narrative, less regulation and more ‘animal spirits’ capitalism produces not only greater prosperity, but more freedom for individuals in society - and is therefore morally better. But, in The Road to Freedom Stiglitz asks, whose freedom are we – should we be – thinking about? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s? 

'Burns with righteous anger. An urgent read for our times' Riz Ahmed 'Fiery, insightful and persuasive... We cannot afford to lose Warsi. She is a vital and impassioned voice' Suzanne Moore, The Daily Telegraph 'There is no more powerful fighter for the cause that Muslims do, should and must...

To Have or to Be? is one of the seminal books of the second half of the 20th century. Fromm's thesis is that two modes of existence struggle for the spirit of humankind: the having mode, which concentrates on material possessions, power, and aggression, and is the basis of the universal evils of greed, envy, and violence; and the being mode, which is based on love, the pleasure of sharing, and in productive activity.

A heartbreaking account of a medical miracle: how one woman’s cells – taken without her knowledge – have saved countless lives. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a true story of race, class, injustice and exploitation. ‘No dead woman has done more for the living . . . A fascinating...

A SUNDAY TIMES BEST NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY ‘A must read and if you think YOU don’t need to read it, that’s just the clue to know you do’ SARAH SILVERMAN ‘A masterpiece' STEPHEN FRY How identity politics failed one particular identity. Jews Don’t Count is a book for...