Sociology: The Essentials

This mainstream text by respected and authoritative authors Margaret Andersen and Howard Taylor is characterized by its focus on a broadly defined diversity, its remarkable integrated map program, its policy coverage, and its contemporary focus. This comprehensive text uses a rich research base as a foundation for a streamlined, highly accessible presentation of the basic principles of sociology. In every chapter, students explore research and data that illustrate how class, race-ethnicity, gender, age, geographic residence, and sexual orientation relate to the topics covered. Using policy and programs to illustrate research and theory, students are able to make sociological connections to their world. In addition, the book's extensive technology package has been expanded to include a FREE accompanying VIRTUAL EXPLORATIONS AND INTERACTIVE MAPS CD-ROM (featuring video clips and interactive map exercises), exciting new ways to expand the book's renowned social policy program emphasis (through Web links and new CNN video clips), video teaching tips on the Companion Web Site, and more.

This textbook emphasizes the relationships between individuals and social structures, inequality, institutions, and change. Specific chapters address sociological perspectives and research, culture, socialization, social interaction, groups and organizations, deviance and crime, class and stratification, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, families and religion, education and health care, politics and the economy, population and urbanization, and social movements. The authors teach at the University of Delaware and Princeton University. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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This text/CD-ROM package, a briefer, paperback version of the authors' text, , introduces basic concepts and theories of sociology, adopting a theme of social change. Critical thinking, diversity, debunking society's myths, social policy, and a global perspective are additional themes woven throughout the text. The CD-ROM contains Web links and questions about sites. This second edition offers a new chapter on age and sex, and expanded material on racial profiling, interracial dating and marriage, and bioterrorism. Andersen teaches sociology and women's studies at the University of Delaware. Taylor teaches sociology at Princeton University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Margaret L. Andersen, raised in Oakland, California; Rome, Georgia; and Boston, is Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her B.A. from Georgia State University. She is the author of Thinking About Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender (Allyn and Bacon) and the best-selling Wadsworth text, Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology (with Patricia Hill Collins). She is also the author of On Land and On Sea: A Century of Women in the Rosenfeld Collection and Living Art: The Life of Paul R. Jones, African American Art Collector. She has recently served as Vice President of the American Sociological Association from which she has also received the prestigious Jessie Bernard Award. She has also been awarded the SWS Feminist Lecturer Award, given annually by SWS (Sociologists for Women in Society) to a social scientist whose work has contributed to improving the status of women in society. She currently serves as Chair of the National Advisory Board of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. She has served as the Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Science and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Delaware, where she has also won the University's Excellence in Teaching Award. She lives on the Elk River in Maryland with her husband Richard Rosenfeld.

Howard F. Taylor was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hiram College and has a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University. He has taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, andPrinceton University, where he is presently Professor of Sociology and former Director of the African American Studies Center. He has published over fifty articles in sociology, education, social psychology, and race relations. His books include The IQ Game (Rutgers University Press), a critique of hereditarian accounts of intelligence; Balance in Small Groups (Van Nostrand Reinhold), translated into Japanese; and the forthcoming Race and Class and the Bell Curve in America. He has appeared widely before college, radio, and TV audiences, including ABC's Nightline. He is past president of the Eastern Sociological Society, and a member of the American Sociological Association and the Sociological Research Association, an honorary society for distinguished research. He is a winner of the DuBois-Johnson-Frazier Award, given by the American Sociological Association for distinguished research in race and ethnic relations, and the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. He lives in Pennington, New Jersey, with his wife, a corporate lawyer.