Product Review

In Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, Eleventh Edition, David M. Newman continues to show students how to see the “unfamiliar in the familiar”—to step back and see organization and predictability in their take-for-granted personal experiences. With his approachable writing style and lively personal anecdotes, the author’s goal since the first edition has been the same: to write a textbook that “reads like a real book.” Newman uses the metaphors of “architecture” and “construction,” to help students understand that society is not something that exists “out there,” independently of them; it is a human creation that is planned, formed, maintained, or altered by individuals.  

Using vivid prose, current examples, and fresh data, this text presents a unique and thought-provoking overview of how society is constructed and experienced. Instead of surveying every subfield in sociology, the more streamlined coverage focuses on the individual and society, the construction of self and society, and social inequality in the context of social structures.