Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light. Why is Miami...Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative...

"New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics,...

The Freakonomics of the sociology world. This book shows how deeply irrational we humans are, and what we can do about it
When we try to understand our world, we ask “why?” a specific event occured. But this profoundly human question often leads us astray. In Cause, sociologist Gregory Smithsimon brings us a much sharper understanding of cause and effect, and shows how we can use it to approach some of our...

A social scientist dispels people's tidy versions of reality and delves deeply into the theories of random chance and chaos to demonstrate that the world really works through random events that can alter the trajectory of our lives.

Four enthralling tales about chance, by the author of Psalm at Journey's End. Tales of Protection is a novel about people in different places in different epochs, contemporary Norway, nineteenth-century Sweden, and Renaissance Italy, whose stories are bound together by the author's original and searching inquiry into why things happen the way they do. As the book opens, a dead man lies in his coffin reflecting on the past. Bolt was an eccentric...

A series of two-frame narratives explore before-and-after scenarios, such as pale skin to sunburned skin, and uncooked pasta to a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

"A colorfully simple introduction for youngsters (and grownups!) to what germs are, how they spread, and how we can keep ourselves and others healthy. It's never too early to become a scientist!"--

Charles Tilly (1929-2008) was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. His work focused on large-scale social change and its relationship to contentious politics, especially in Europe, since 1500. His many books include The Politics of Collective Violence; Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000; Social Movements, 1768-2004; Economic and Political Contention in Comparative Perspective , coedited with Maria...