Books about Sociology

You will see the world from a whole new perspective after reading this book. And you will be totally scared about what you are revealing to others through your body language. The book is wonderfully presented with scores of photographs, illustrations and diagrams, peppered with humorous one-liners. It covers several aspects of body language, including facial expressions, arm signals and leg gestures. The authors also talk about differences in various cultures and between males and females - both in making and recognizing signals. Regardless of whether you are dating or want to conduct business better, this is a book you must read, and probably buy to keep as a reference.

Tags: sociology culture

A look at the open source movement and its various facets. The author dwells into the phenomenon of why people would contribute their time willingly to something that offers them no return. The book shows what kinds of software lend themselves to success in the open source environment.

Tags: software sociology

How little things make a huge difference in the way things work. Lots of good examples. The book has several implications for marketing and business in general.

Tags: economics marketing sociology

"Nudge" is about making progress towards economic and political goals through better implementation of how choices and defaults are designed. In theory, having more choices is better, but in real life, human beings rarely take proper advantage of choices because they procrastinate or fall prey to temptation by hyped-up choices. Instead of restricting choices (which can be infeasible in many cases), the authors advocate creating defaults for choices such that people automatically choose the best (or least harmful) choice by default. The right to choose a different option (based on personal inclination or capacity for risk) is preserved.

The authors offer different suggestions for investments, healthcare, education and the environment. In many cases, these ideas are low-hanging fruit - they would be generally acceptable to a wide section of the general public and can be easily implemented by policy administrators. However, the book ignores the effect of lobbyists on legislation and executive decisions. Industries, which may lose out on some suggestions, would fight harder to prevent such ideas from taking effect. The book also falters in its take in some areas, especially civil marriage, nor does it effectively address possible defects of its proposed ideas.

I like the general concept of the book. Too often, we see partisan fights over "perfect" solutions that consume time and energy, while people suffer for years. Incremental solutions move us ahead and provide some relief. Since they are, almost by definition, proposed to work with existing policies and procedures, they are more practical and can gain greater support. Of course, partisans do not like such ideas because they are always about ideology and never yielding an inch to the opposition. But incrementalism can overcome partisanship to a significant degree.

Tags: economics sociology

In this book, Malcolm Gladwell looks at the reasons behind success. He finds that, in addition to intrinsic talent and perseverance, many other factors such as fortunate circumstances, cultural background and occasionally plain luck have a lot to do with success. Most people are vaguely aware of this, but Gladwell drives it home by presenting some compelling examples of how being born at the wrong time or in the wrong family can have a much greater influence on the lives of people than we generally give credit for.

However, the book could have done with some tighter editing and research. At times, Gladwell seems to be casting a wider net with his different stories. The coherency of the narrative has to be supplied by the reader while Gladwell keeps going in an undisciplined fashion. The biggest problem with examples is whether they are representative of the group. In the case of Jewish immigrants and Korean pilots, a pattern could be seen. But in the example of the Beatles at Hamburg, Gladwell does not take the time to research other music groups and justify his conclusions. So that weakens the message a tad.

Tags: sociology

A quite interesting book on how Republicans captured the high ground on the cultural issues and succeeded in becoming the dominant party in the United States.

Tags: sociology politics

Hallinan has written a smart book on how human beings keep making mistakes in our day-to-day lives even though we should know better. Many of these mistakes are because of deeply embedded behaviors in human beings.

For example, we are more likely to think we are above average and over-estimate our capabilities, thus taking on something that we cannot handle. We are not very capable of multi-tasking, but we don't realize it, as evidenced by the many cell phone car accidents. There are differences between the way men and women approach a particular problem. Understanding these shortcomings can help us avoid problems and also understand why people behave the way they do.

Tags: psychology sociology

Interesting twist on the debate over the usefulness of TV and video games. The author claims that watching TV and video games makes us smarter and does a good job trying to prove it. The disappointments with this book are the confusing arrangements of the chapters in the book and lack of emphasis on moderation of exposure.

Tags: sociology

It is somewhat tough to read Friedman's book after reading Matt Taibbi's takedown. Despite that, I think this is a good book on its merits because it discusses many aspects of climate change and explains many different initiatives that can be taken to protect our planet. It is worth a read.

However, Friedman makes a mistake when he tries to conflate too many different ideas into a grand theory. Friedman's thesis is that higher oil revenues prop up dictators and therefore environmentalism is good for democracy. But elsewhere he states that oil demand will only go up in the short run even if energy conserving mechanisms are put into place. So it is not possible to reduce oil revenues. So why confuse the issue by introducing democracy promotion into an environmental discussion.

The problem is that environmentalism is not Friedman's primary strengths. He has primarily been an analyst for political and economic themes and his foray into issues of climate change and energy is that of an amateur trying to learn the ropes. And hence, the paradox of the book. It is a good introduction to the topic because the author is still in a learning mode. At the same time, it has fluid concepts and lacks the purity, understanding and detail of a Jeffrey Sachs book.

Tags: economics sociology politics

The author travels through the United States to find the person who most closely fits the average attributes of an American. The book is full of interesting factoids. The book drags slightly towards the end.

Tags: sociology

A disappointing book. It is like a concise version of "The Definitive Book of Body Language", can be read in a couple of hours, and hence, it has little depth of knowledge. Except for its numerous color photographs and illustrations, this book has nothing going for it.

Tags: sociology culture

The author takes a look at many of the conspiracy theories floating around and explains why people are misguided in believing them. Roeper writes well, but in my view, he has not done a particularly good job for a few reasons.

First, he takes on too many topics from sports to politics to religion. And so the book lacks a coherent thread. Each topic is dealt with very quickly, sometimes without really driving the point home. The author's use of irony may seem humorous, but in fact, reduces the effectiveness of the message. Thus, the book will be more appealing to skeptics than those who already believe in crazy theories.

Because of the essay-length examination of each topic, the author does not consider the motivations and belief systems of the believers in conspiracy theories. He often resorts to mocking them instead of taking every argument at face value and providing evidence to the contrary. This is an unserious book that fails to do justice to the word "debunked".

Tags: sociology

What an absolutely boring book! Even the stories and examples feel stone-cold. The contents of this book would have been better expressed in a simple article. The authors attempt to explain the collaboration of multitudes of peoples to create useful software and knowledge. There are some useful concepts, but it is very poorly written.

Tags: sociology business software web

The author explains the need to deliberate and think carefully before making decisions. He has framed and packaged his book in direct opposition to Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink!". That would have been a good argument, but in fact, Gladwell had a lot of examples pointing out the PROBLEMS with making decisions with thin-slicing. The rest of the book has no thoughtful analysis of the arguments in "Blink!" - making the packaging somewhat deceptive. LeGault, instead, uses the general concept of deliberative scientific thinking to take some political potshots at environmentalists and other items not on the right-wing agenda. The flow-stopping biographies illustrate the hacked-up nature of the book - probably he had to meet a publisher deadline - how much more easier to add a few thousand words than that!

Tags: economics sociology