Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

The Condition of the Working Class in England

Friedrich Engels · 336 pages

"The Condition of the Working Class is the best-known work of Engels, and in many ways still the best study of the working class in Victorian England. It was also Engels's first book, written during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844. Manchester was then at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution and Engels compiled his study from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. T

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Barbara Ehrenreich · 248 pages

"Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed." "Bait and Switch highlights the people who've done everything right - gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes - yet have become repeatedly vulnerable t

Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive

Bruce Schneier · 366 pages

In today's hyper-connected society, understanding the mechanisms of trust is crucial. Issues of trust are critical to solving problems as diverse as corporate responsibility, global warming, and the political system. In this insightful and entertaining book, Schneier weaves together ideas from across the social and biological sciences to explain how society induces trust. He shows the unique role

The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change

David Harvey · 378 pages

Traces the development of the concept of postmodernism, explains its differences with modernism, and discusses political and social influences.

Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class

Noam Scheiber · 384 pages

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

Anu Partanen · 448 pages

A Finnish journalist and naturalized American citizen compares and contrasts life in the U.S. with life in the Nordic region to encourage Americans to draw on practices from the Nordic way of life to create a fairer, happier, more secure, and less stressful society. At a 2012 conference on social mobility, where experts discussed whether people worldwide were attaining a better life than their pa

The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need

Juliet B. Schor · 272 pages

Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World

Doug Saunders · 368 pages

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Robert D. Putnam · 386 pages

"A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. It's the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in--a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last

World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction

Immanuel Wallerstein · 109 pages

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

Sudhir Venkatesh · 448 pages

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell · 320 pages

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their

The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't Be Jammed

Joseph Heath, Andrew Potter · 376 pages

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Katherine Boo · 256 pages

The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts

Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help

Robert D. Lupton · 191 pages

Public service is a way of life for Americans; giving is a part of our national character. But compassionate instincts and generous spirits aren't enough, says veteran urban activist Robert D. Lupton. In this groundbreaking guide, he reveals the disturbing truth about charity: all too much of it has become toxic, devastating to the very people it's meant to help. In his four decades of urban minis

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women

Hanna Rosin · 310 pages

Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. And yet, as journalist Hanna Rosin discovered, that long-held truth is no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, women are no longer merely gaining on men; they have pulled decisively ahead by almost every measure. Already "the end of men" -- the phrase Rosin coined -- has entered the lexicon as indelibly as Simone de Beauvoir's

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued

Ann Crittenden · 329 pages

"The price of motherhood is everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of more than a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Most child care is excluded from the gross domestic product, at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force, and the social safety net simply leaves them out. With passion a

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Mike Davis · 462 pages

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

Richard Florida · 434 pages

Here, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy. He describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant.

The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures

Jean Baudrillard · 224 pages

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

Eric Schlosser · 320 pages

In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants. The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- perhaps more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its r

The Third Wave

Alvin Toffler · 537 pages

What about Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-based Society

Paul Verhaeghe · 272 pages

According to current thinking, anyone who fails to succeed must have something wrong with them. The pressure to achieve and be happy is taking a heavy toll, resulting in a warped view of the self, disorientation, and despair. People are lonelier than ever before. Today's pay-for-performance mentality is turning institutions such as schools, universities, and hospitals into businesses - even indivi