Social Sciences Books

A great book for kids 5 and under, it covers the basic information kids need to know about how babies are made, okay/not okay touches and families. Its fun cartoon illustrations make it an engaging read for the preschool set.

I love the drawings of naked boys and girls that show how we are alike and different. At this age, kids are very curious about body parts, both public and private, and this book gives them a safe place to check out the opposite sex.

Remember to read it yourself before you read it to your kids - maybe even out loud. Saying "penis enters the vagina" gets easier the more times you say it!

We purchased this book to read with our 10 1/2 year old. It's a very age appropriate book and a great introduction to the "birds and the bees". It gives just enough information without being overwhelming for little minds and it helps to open the door to communication with your kids abut sex. We highly recommend this book.

This is a keeper and will be on our shelf for a long time. It's wonderful to see Marc Brown's familiar illustration style and Laurie Krasny's clear explanations of the mysteries of growing up. Great job and thank you!

I had my son to read this book- I read thru it first, and then I gave it to him to read on his own. When he was finished, I asked if he had any questions, and opened the room for discussion. I feel this book was very helpful in answering everything he was curious about- it was just the right amount of straight forward, yet age appropriate information.

I bought this book to explain sex to my 10 year old daughter. I read it first then hide it fast! I didn't let my daughter read it. The book was good until it talked about masturbation. It says, "Touching and rubbing your genitals to feel good is called masturbation." This is not something I want her to know about yet. It also says 'sexual intercourse feels wonderful.' Well, I don't want her to know that either. (I don't want to lie to the girl!) So the hunt is back on for the perfect sex book.

thank you for selling this book. it made it to me in great time and is in excellent condition. thanks!

"Interviewing for Solutions" is wonderful. I would encourage anyone interested in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) to read this book. "Interviewing for Solutions" supplies the reader with a overview of SFBT, as well as demonstrating SFBT in action via examples of interviews with various clients. Regardless of the counseling orientation one takes when assisting clients, the book provides valuable tools for all! In addition to this book, I would highly suggest obtaining a few of the lecture tapes of Berg, de Shazer and etc from the Brief Family Therapy Center.

Although solution focused-brief therapy is considered a paradigm, this book could very well be used in any introductory, microskills class, and it should.

The authors put forth a paradigm that is easy to learn (yet technique is perfected with much experience),and it places focus on the client's "non-problem" life. This is important because what we tend to focus on tends to increase.

The authors present SF in a way that is very empowering to both the therapist and the client. For the therapist who is interested in genuinely helping people, this will work, but you cannot use this approach and have an ego-issue w/regard to being an "expert." Rightly, the client is the expert on his/her own life.

A first-class text, and a keeper!

In the year 2000, this book was my first acquaintance with the solution focused approach to helping people. I had heard from a collegue (who is also a management coach) about solution focused working and, although I thought it sounded promising, I remained a bit skeptical. However, from the very moment I started reading 'Interviewing for solutions' my attention was firmly captured. Two chapters later I was practically sold. The approach is very clearly explained and the many dialogues in the book are really excellent (especially those by Insoo Kim Berg). After reading this book I started reading and learning more and I began using solution focused working in my practise as a coach and consultant. With peasure and success.

Great strengths based approach to working with families and young people from vulnerable communities.

Reading Chuck Palahniuk's collection of oddball 'strange-but-true' stories, articles written for various magazines about twisted people and their twisted little hobbies, is like watching "America's Most Terrifying Videos" or reading "Ripley's Believe It or Not." You feel guilty for enjoying the freak show... but not enough to stop reading. The book isn't that thick, and there are 23 chapters so each one makes a pretty good (and somehow appropriate) bathroom companion. There are chapters guaranteed to offend almost any sensibility, and yet there you sit still reading long after your business is done. They say knowledge is neutral, neither good nor inherently bad. But does that mean that every story has to be told?

Interesting true stories told well. One story offering some insight into the man? A departure for Palahniuk but one of my favorites of his.

Chuck Palahniuk out-does his own fiction writing, (which can be strange at times) with this collection of "True" stories.
Any fan of Chuck will appreciate this book. It lives up to it's title, and delivers it's helping of strange and obscure topics.
One of these topics is masturbation. And, he has much to say about this, including the reactions of the listeners when he read this story at bookstores around the world. And, let's not exclude the "Testicle Festival," the yearly event near Massoula Montana, that includes public nakedness, sex, and debauchery of all sorts. And, of course, the consumption of fried bull testicles. (dipped in ranch dressing)
So, get on...hold on tight. You may wish you hadn't, but, then again, if you are already familiar with Chuck's work, you probably would expect no less.

I was attracted to this book after reading fight club, choke, haunted and lullaby. So, of course, i had high hopes. I picked it up, and it was not any where near as good as I thought it would be. There are like 2 good stories but the rest are just bland. While i was reading, i kept thinking, "And why am i reading this?" try reading other palahniuk books such as choke. This, for me, was a dissapointment.

Many other reviewers have noted that some of the stories in this book are slow and dry. The drawn out descriptions of the castle builders immediately comes to mind, as does the personal story of Juliette Lewis. But overall this is a worthwhile look into the mind and life of one of the best authors of our time. I feel like I know Chuck Palahniuk on a more personal level now, and that's what I was hoping for. I find him a fascinating man, someone I would love to sit down for coffee with. With that desire in mind, I am very happy I waded through this book.

Awesome book! However, I find it hard to follow his writing at times because he's using a lot of technical terms. I think this book is very relevant to our teens today and you would be wise to take time to read it.

Very sobering look at the state of adolecent thinking. Well researched and informative. A must read!!

This book was recommended to me by my youth pastor, and as a senior pastor I'm glad I've read it. If you thought you understood youth and their lifestyles, then think again. Chap Clark reveals that the youth of today are greatly different than the youth of twenty or even ten years ago. Combining hard sociological data with a Christian compassion for young people, the author enlightens anyone who comes into contact with teenagers. I strongly recommend this book to any parent, pastor, church leader, or other adult who is working with teens. We can't truly minister to younger generations until we've taken the time and effort to understand their unique needs and wants. Clark does an excellent job here of summarizing them both.

I bought this book expecting to get a healthy dose of sociology along with some seriouse theological reflection on the sociological data. I was wrong. In my opinion this book was too heavy on sociology and too lite on theology. If Clark would've spent more time connecting the sociological conclusions to theological implications, the book would've been a gem.

Below is the book review I submitted to Group Magazine regarding this book.

This is an academic resource that differs from most in that it describes what the adolescent culture of today looks like through the eyes of those who live it.

Dr. Chap Clark has given those who care for, and work with youth another gem. This resource is for any adult (parents, counselors, teachers, professional youth workers) that has significant interaction with teenagers. Most importantly, this book offers wisdom and insight as to how to connect with teens that are abandoned and hurt. A major premise (and proof) of this book is that these abandoned and hurt teens are not just the "at-risk" youth, but a shockingly large group of students that have been left behind by well intentioned adults and their created programs. You will not find "over-talked" postmodern rhetoric in this book. You will find compelling, hard-hitting data that clearly states the crisis that teenagers are experiencing today. Hurt will be difficult for some to read because it challenges the very landscape its readers have created. Further, it is a deep book and could be challenging for some with limited reading skill level.

. . . unlike the Internet, our time is not infinite. So, while the Internet has allowed for total randomness, for the sake of each individual's time, there needs to be some order. And, while it's nice to think that tags and other technologies will do this, so far, they have created their own disorder and randomness.

So, what has actually happened is a site like Wikipedia has become our defacto "rule of order". Just do a search on any topic. Most likely, the Wikipedia entry will be in the top 3. And of course, there is a reason for that: We the people want order.

Order reduces options. Classical education inclines the mind to idealism.
Through the ages we have grown heavy with hierarchical matter, isolated by divisive, absolute, classified ideologies in the name of order maintained as truth by authority. Now "Everything is Miscellaneous" glories in a new vision of hope, transparency, understanding, freedom, and peace--a newly enlightened collective consciousness. Weinberger's work is fascinating and exuberant with optimism that we can emerge out of the chaos of messy, unfettered knowledge to global understanding. Western civilization (essentialism) from Plato to Aristotle to Dewey to Jimmy Wales is up for review and the prognosis is good. Read the book; play with tools; enter the conversations; navigate the cosmos, indeed, let knowledge at long last lead to understanding.

It always frustrated me that I could never get a group to really achieve consensus on the best way to organize a website. Arguments about how to label pages, what to include and not include, etc. dominated discussions. You always ended up with a compromise that people outside of the room end up questioning.

Until you realize, there IS no one right way to organize a web site.

David Weinberger's book, Everything is Miscellaneous, dramatically details why I was having such a difficult time and the good news -- that increasingly in the digital world, we can stop worrying about how to organize the information and concentrate on providing information that contributes to meaningful understanding.

We're not constrained by front page real estate, column space/sizes, peer-review editorial boards and other feedback filtering mechanisms that came to dominate what he calls the 2nd order of organization. People access knowledge in the digital world through a variety of means and it becomes less important who you are and more important what the perceived value of what you contribute is.

Of course most businesses currently operate under the model he describes of providing the engineered customer experience. They have spent tons of resources building a brand based precisely on who they are and why you should listen to them. They could probably care less about adding to meaning, they just want sales or readers or whatever.

I highly recommend the book to anyone who has ever been frustrated by an attempt to classify or organize -- whether it's organizing a closet, file drawers, deciding where to put a file on a shared drive at work, grading 3rd grade papers, planning a web site or whatever.

Similarly anyone who has ever looked for something and couldn't find it, especially if you consider yourself organized -- you will love how this book opens up your perspective on finding, organizing and searching in the new digital world.

Of course, if you're under the age of like 19, you've grown up with this and the book won't have as much meaning potentially.

In the physical world, we have to abide by the laws of physics - atoms can only be in one place at a point in time. Hence, store layouts, filing structures, or even the mess on your desk comes to down optimization, context, and often, personal bias. However, in the digital world, as David Weinberger points out, we have no such limitations. If we can get rid of the idea that there is a best way to organize our digital world, we'll end up with a world of meta-data and systems that can dynamically construct faceted trees to exactly meet your immediate needs.

"Everything is Miscellaneous" is a great argument against Aristotelian trees and the notion of 'perfect order'. Let's face it, we're all different, we all have our context, and our information systems should exploit these facts. Migrating towards meta-data is the first step.

I totally disagree with the reviewers that pontificate against this book. It is not a techno-geek book, or a philosophy book, it is simply a common sense overview that I personally consider to be educated, helpful to the point of essential. At $16, with the Amazon discount, this book is a bargain.

I started with the index, and immediately discovered Meta-Data had 18 lines.

The book opens with examples from Staples ("hacking the physical") to Apple iTunes (end of bundling) and I am immediately charmed by the combination of an end to fraudulent store organization (Giant supermarket moves everything from one week to the next to force searching which increases impulse buying) and an increase in focus on serving the individual rather than serving up a "one size fits all" solution. Separately I am looking at Chinese medicine for a health intelligence book, and this resonates.

Early on one sees the author agreeing with Jean Francois Noubel (the end of the pyramidal organization) and Jim Rough (rise of the circle of citizen wisdom)--I myself enraged the secret intelligence mandarins by announcing in the 1990's that "in the age of decentralized information central intelligence is an oxymoron." The author is one of the gurus of what is becoming known as the axis of Cognitive Science and Collective Intelligence (the Art), and he and another 54 authors are brought together in the first collective work of its kind, Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace which is also free online in full pdf or chapter docs. Disclosure: I published the book--I do not know the author personally, but Jock Gill, a gifted communicator, exposed me to the author's earlier work on Open Spectrum, something that inspired my own informal views on "Open Everything" and unlike most of the other contributors that were identified by Tom Atlee or Mark Tovey (the editor), I personally sought his contribution to the book because of my very high regard for his "take" on all this.

I bought the book as a fan already, but the content easily validates my appreciation The discussion of first order pigeon-holing (the Weberian concept of bureaucracy applies), second order cross referencing (naturally limited and often wrong in early generations--Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal System are toast), versus unlimited tagging, chunking, clustering, socially-informed selection, and other aspects of the power of the collective, are all illuminated by this book.

I am further impressed early on with his stellar discussion of Mortimer Adler and the limitations of alphabetization. I was a penniless graduate student when I discovered the Great Books, and as a young officer, spent my first $700 acquiring a set. The Syntopicon that the author mentions in the book is better understood by the image I introduce above, something I created in 1979, my second of four analytic models (the first was on predicting revolution across all domains).

I have two notes at this point:

1) Truth or what can be known constantly changing, a fixed or slow to adapt "index" process cannot scale or survive.

2) 2008 election is already lost--neither candidate offers us what we deserve: listening instead of stump speeches; appointed cabinet and balanced budget now, as part of the campaign, instead of empty promises; and 24/7 interaction with all 65 political parties, instead of focusing on the one third that is their base and a slice of the middle third.

He emphasizes that knowledge is not top down, and with a tip of the hat to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and also facilitator for the nation-wide network of 27 separatist movements, I also post above an image of Epoch B "bottom up" leadership that none of our world leaders understand.

Page 80, discussion of Ranganathan (India) Colon Classification system impresses me. I think to myself, wow, needs to be integrated into Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language, or IEML.

The middle of the book discusses--engagingly, I feel--how the digital world enables infinite variations in relationships and labels that can in turn create infinite variations of just right, just in time, just enough visualizations.

Crowd tagging leads to sub-set clustering which leads to contextual sense-making.

He spend time on Wikipedia. I admire Jimbo Wales and try to attend the Wikimanias, but I have given up on Wikipedia because in the case of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) page, I had to give up--while the author would have me engage and patiently lead the recalcitrant along (I have 20 years experience with that in the real world) I have come to a different conclusion: I believe that anyone should be allowed to CREATE, but only master moderators should be allowed to destroy.

The summary of the book's message is offered by the author with four concepts:

1) Filter on the way OUT, not in (this is the difference between the read only publishing model, and the read-write Creative Commons model)

2) Put each leaf on as many branches as possible--unlike the physical world, each leaf can have infinite lives

3) Everything is meta data and everything can be a label (he provides a fine discussion of bar codes, RFIDs, and Thinglinks)

4) Give up control. He admires Wikipedia for doing precisely that. When I first started the modern OSINT movement in 1992, I coined the phrase, "Give up control to gain control" meaning that centralized intelligence had to give way to decentralized sharing and sense-making. The spies still don't get it, but public intelligence in the public interest is here to stay. A corollary here is that the best approach is to include all--optimize inclusiveness and diversity; and where there is conflict or disagreement, postpone exclusion or resolution, more data later will make it easier and easier to come back to...

The final section of the book deals with mapping the implicit, mining the clouds of tags, creating an infrastructure of meaning with infinite potential. I have a note: unites the eight tribes of intelligence (governmenbt, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-profits, and civil societies including religions and labor unions).

Other flyleaf notes:

+ Stupid works. Keep it simple and let it evolve on its own.

+ Bit by bit, not all at once. Provide for innovation at the intersections and on the margins

+ Kind of and sort of rule, not the black and white that did rule

+ I learn of Valdis Krebs and his concepts of social cartography

+ I am engaged with the discussion of information sprawl and natural typologies

+ The author concludes that the search for knowledge will constantly struggle between the simple and the complex (sources and methods).

+ Going meta is what is so cool about web ecology and evolution.

The author does NOT say this, but I mark his book down as being in favor of the human web of sense-making beating out the semantic web and machine learning schools.

Page 230, this is a quote that really grabs my attention: "It's not about who is right and who is wrong. It's how different points of view are negotiated, given context, and embodied with passion and interest. Individual thinking out-loud now have weight, and authority and expertise are losing some of their gravity." The rest of this page is equally good.

I am surprised to learn that the author holds a PhD in philosophy, and that he advised Howard Dean. I am not surprised to learn that he has been twice renewed as a fellow at the Berkman Center.

Other books that have engaged me and for which I have reviews:
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition

There are many others, most obvious. Please do see the two images I post above--I firmly believe that the last eight years were a gift from heaven, a necessarily catastrophic gutting of our Nation so that we might properly conclude that both political parties stink with corruption, and it is time we put We the People back into the Republic, 24/7. This book is a solid brick in our foundation for understanding why this is both possible, and necessary.

This book added new insights and perspective on retirement planning and what retirement means. A good read that's both fun, informative, and even inspiring. Anyone contemplating retirement should read this book (and the author's other book "The Joy of not working").

I received the book in excellent condition and shipping was fast. Great to do business with!

I've read many, many books on retirement, being an author of one myself The New Retirement: Revised and Updated: The Ultimate Guide to the Rest of Your Life.

Mr. Zelinski's book is optimistic and fun, and promotes a positive aspect of retirement that I like - an opportunity to take control of your time. A good read that focues on some of the all-so-important (but often ignored) non-financial aspects of retirement.

Zelinski offers a number of BGO's but I've known too many folks who have moved on into retirement without giving much heed to the straightfoward advice he offers. We all may know how much money we have (or don't have)when we retire, but we may not "what" we're retiring to or think about "who" we will be when we do so. I think he may have over-simplified some of the pre-retirement mental exercises, but he does hit home that we have to have faith in ourselves and respect for (rather than fear of) the unknowns.

Earnie Zelinski writes "Happy, Wild and Free" in the same easy, light style as "The Joy of Not Working." He has created an excellent resource for those of us looking for the meaning of "life after work." I particularly liked Chapter 6, "Your Wealth is Where Your Frieds Are." Life after retirement is so much more than just having enough money, and Zelenski makes that case very well. Some very good advice is contained in these pages.
John Trauth
Author, "Your Retirement, Your Way."

This book seems to be written for an undergraduate audience. If you are a graduate students and/or if you have already taken a course in research methods, chapters 7-9 are probably the only ones that will be useful, new information for you. Since these chapters are helpful, I would still recommend the book to graduate students if you can find it for no more than $15, but I don't think it's worth much more than that.

This book walks you right through the literature review process. It gives ideas for organizing your research and is something you will keep right by your side as you write your literature review. A must have for graduate students writing literature reviews in APA.

This book is a step-by-step guide to the process of writing literature reviews. It is very thorough and takes nothing for granted. It is an excellent book that will assist students in turning out literature reviews that will earn them A's in graduate school programs.

This is an easy-reading book that will walk you through the writing process, and give you steps to keep you working towards your deadline, so you don't leave yourself too little time to do the paper.

Writing for school is very stressful and not knowing what is expected makes it even more so. This book was recommended by my professor who likely did not want to spend a whole class or two walking us through the process. This book is an excellent resource to give you the guidance you need to get your literature review done. As with anything, getting started is the hardest part, but once you start, this book will take you through step-by-step. Highly recommend.

This book covers global development from colonialism, to 'de-colonization' to globalization in a truly holistic sense. With a background in economics and a special interest in food systems, McMichael is truly informed in his analysis of the global power structure and how it has developed through time. Not ignored are studies of inequalities of race/ethnicity, gender, and class on a global scale.
The book is slow reading, due to density of the subject matter and large amounts of facts and terms. However, this only serves to intensify and broaden the learning experience as you move through the book. It moves chronologically through time, offering case studies, further reading at the end of each chapter, and questions to promote critical thinking. This is one of the most fantastic books I have ever read, and he is one of the most informed, passionate, honest, and blunt professors I have had.
The book itself is a textbook, and should be read as such. Some accuse him of political leanings, and though surely he may have them in his personal life, his abilities to display just the facts is noteworthy. Every future CEO, Banker, Politician, Lawyer, and member of the Global South would benefit from reading this book.

McMichaels book on globalization is a collection of gross overstatements, dubious statistics and figures (nearly always mentioned without citations) and embarrassing generalizations, poor writing and an absence of wit or even insight. Possibly one of the worst things I've ever been assigned to read- so bad in fact, I was inspired to write my first ever online review. That said, global economics and the structural orchestration of inequality associated with today's neoliberal economic development is a fascinating topic, certainly deserving of our attention. With some organization, a writing class or two, a solid editor, and maybe a class in academic research methods, McMichael may yet have a future in Academia. In the mean time, skip this one and find something else (Harvey) more worthwhile.



That said, the message is

This book is an introduction to the social analysis of the development project. If amazon gave the option, I would rate it 3 1/2 stars instead. The book gives a brief history of international development and the analysis focuses on overarching themes, such as decolonization, the shift from keynesian to neoliberal models, and disharmonies. Case studies are interspersed throughout to give examples. The book is light on economics and even lighter on theory. It is accessible to anyone with the most basic of understandings in trade. The reason I give the book 3 stars is because the first 2 parts, or 200 pages or so, of the book contribute very little original material or insights, and lack in depth. Unless you do well from a textbook format, I would recommend a separate historical text on development combined with a socio-cultural analysis. The two are not combined well in this work in my opinion. That said, for someone new to sociology of development this is a good starting point.

One interesting and valuable approach is that he attempts to seed the narrative with the question of "whether and to what extent development is a process often realized through the intensification of inequalities, despite its stated intentions." This should tell you something about the subtle political leanings of the author, which did not distract from the goals of providing students with foundational knowledge in international development.

Usually professors who assign their own book for a class tend to be egotists. McMichael bucked that trend, however, by assigning his book which explained everything I ever needed or wanted to know about how the world works. The structure of the book makes it easy for anyone to understand and explains the state of the world today using historical context, which I found fascinating. However cheesy this may be, I honestly think the world would be a better place if more people read this book.

I completely agree with Mr. Jones' review. I can name countless books that offer strong arguments and good research. I can also recommend many books that are written with such clear and graceful style that they are a pleasure to read. McMichael is one of the few authors who can manage to combine these two aspects. I thank him for making it both easy and interesting for me to learn about this field of study.