Working in America: Continuity, Conflict, and Change

This is good book to use as a text book. It is easy reading but is deep with morals and a wide breadth of issues.

I teach sociology at a major university and I've used both the second and third editions of this text. Wharton has done a good job of pulling together a variety of readings about work. It's not a general reader about economic sociology, but it doesn't claim to be, and it has relatively little to say about the social organization of work outside the U.S, but again it doesn't claim to do that. Most of the readings have been edited extensively, and the editing is, for the most part, well done. (One of the difficulties of editing down 300 page books into 8 page articles is that continuity can be a serious problem. It is a problem here at times, but only rarely.) I miss some of the articles that were present in the second edition and have been replaced in the third, e.g., an excerpt from Richard Edwards' CONTESTED TERRAIN. In any event, I definitely recommend this collection.