Provides a concise presentation of sociological theory and research. This text presents all the essentials of sociology, with illustrative examples, in a form that condenses lengthy, descriptive material. Some of its additional features include: a social policy section which illustrates applications of sociological issues to modern life by linking concepts, theories and research to newspaper headlines; three critical questions at the end of each chapter; contemporar… More >>
Sociology: A Brief Introduction
I have received my item very quickly and it was brand new as it was described. Thanks a lot :-)
Rating: 5 / 5
I am a college student. go through about 9-12 textbooks per year. There are textbooks that I don’t mind reading for class yet very rarely do I find a book that is just plain bad like this one. I own the newest edition (6th) of Schaefer’s Sociology: A Brief Introduction and I plead teachers and professors out there NOT to use it. Despite being the 6th edition and costing around $70 for a new copy in bookstores, the book seemed unpolished, incohesive, and very confusing.
Everyday I have around 20 pages to read for every one of my class and guess which one I put off until last? If you guessed Sociology: A Brief Introduction, you are correct. Even after reading the book carefully and highlighting, I can’t seem to grasp the information very well. The facts and information seem to be randomly toss at me out of no where. There is no organization in the text. A very painful read. PLEASE DON’T USE THIS BOOK IN THE CLASSROOM.
Rating: 1 / 5
This product came to me in a timely fashion and I was prepared to start my class.
Rating: 5 / 5
Can anyone still be preaching Karl Marx in the 21st Century? Richard T. Schaefer can. Thanks to Mr. Schaefer, I now know that as a white male I must get up every morning and ask myself, “whom can I oppress and exploit today? Let’s see, how about some poor female or someone of an ethnic minority?” I found it offensive all the way through and told my professor that I was offended that she chose this textbook. Mr. Schaefer pretends that he’s writing a sociology textbook, but the book is basically Marxist propaganda. Schaefer presents the three basic approaches to sociology, but he cannot hide his Marxist bias, which colors everything in the entire book. (I would also like to add that the readers on the audio CD are incredibly pretentious and have some strange ideas about the pronunciation of the English language, i.e., the word “united” is accented on the first syllable.) The only thing useful that I got out of this book was that an idea I thought was my own had actually been hatched by Erving Goffman fifty years ago. (I plan to read something by Goffman now.) I would strongly advise educators against using this textbook. There are surely others that are not propaganda.
Rating: 2 / 5
The book is new but it didn’t come with a CD. When the information comes up it says it was “with audio Abridgement CD – Rom…”", only the owner said it wasn’t part, so I didn’t read it all and thought I was buing something with CR-Rom. You should always read how Amazon says about the product and what the owners says. I had to different information about the same product
Rating: 4 / 5