Essentials of Sociology

This book was purchased for my Sociology class. I got an A. Served its purpose.

The new addition by Brinkerhoff et. al., though it provides the basics for teaching introduction to Sociology and by far one of the best texts available, is more efficient, but sacrifices much needed information. The recent edition deletes a chapter and attempts to incorparate issues of poverty and inequality in the other chapters, but this really needs to be its own chapter, so I would recommend that they reintroduce it in future editions. Furthermore, their population and urban discussion is good, but its environmental discussion is weak. They really need to add a stronger environmental piece. Furthermore, I really thought that their section on religion was much better in the previous edition. Students had a much easier time grasping concepts. The authors redid this section and now the distinct sects and subsects are unclear. Finally, I would recommend that if you use this book that you find supplemental material on social stratification, social inequality and social differentiation because the book does a poor job discussing the differences. I also would recommend supplemental materials to discuss the race and ethnicity chapter because its discussion on ideological racism and its history is weak. Despite my minor critiques, I still would hightly recommend this book.

I have used other texts, and usually start with Peter Berger's "Invitation to Sociology" but starting this year have discovered a wonderful text for Introduction to Sociology with this marvelous book. It makes use of the contemporary web page like design that I find distracting -- but students seem to like -- but the articles themselves are an excellent introduction. The chapters are set up to match a typical sequence in a course and they give a fair balance of views on each of the major topics. I have been very pleased with this book.