Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life—with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy—despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something.”Arguing that the historical present is perceived affectively before it is understood in any other way, Berlant traces affective and aesthetic responses to the dramas of adjustment that unfold amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis. She suggests that our stretched-out present is characterized by new modes of temporality, and she explains why trauma theory—with its focus on reactions to the exceptional event that shatters the ordinary—is not useful for understanding the ways that people adjust over time, once crisis itself has become ordinary. Cruel Optimism is a remarkable affective history of the present.

    Immigration is remaking Europe and North America: over half of American babies are non-white, and by the end of the century, minorities and those of mixed race are projected to form the majority in many countries.Drawing on an extraordinary range of surveys, Whiteshift explores the majority response to ethnic change in Western Europe, North America and Australasia. Eric Kaufmann, a leading expert on immigration, calls for us to move beyond empty talk about national identity and open up debate about the future of white majorities. He argues that we must ditch the 'diversity myth' that whites will dwindle, replacing it with whiteshift - a new story of majority transformation that can help lift anxieties and heal today's widening political divisions.A bold, original work, Whiteshift will redefine the way we think about ethnic diversity and populism.

    D. Laing discusses how and why we value society's notions of family over our own.Using concepts of schizophrenia, R.D. Laing demonstrates that we tend to invalidate the subjective and experiential and accept the proper societal view of what should occur within the family.A psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Laing worked at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. His books include The Self and Others and The Politics of Experience.

    But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype--ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as a truth.David Halperin, a pioneer of LGBTQ studies, dares to suggest that gayness is a specific way of being that gay men must learn from one another in order to become who they are. Inspired by the notorious undergraduate course of the same title that Halperin taught at the University of Michigan, provoking cries of outrage from both the right-wing media and the gay press, "How To Be Gay" traces gay men's cultural difference to the social meaning of style.Far from being deterred by stereotypes, Halperin concludes that the genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised features: its aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoration of glamour, caricatures of women, and obsession with mothers. The insights, impertinence, and unfazed critical intelligence displayed by gay culture, Halperin argues, have much to offer the heterosexual mainstream.

    This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

    Lasch’s identification of narcissism as not only an individual ailment but also a burgeoning social epidemic was groundbreaking. His diagnosis of American culture is even more relevant today, predicting the limitless expansion of the anxious and grasping narcissistic self into every part of American life.The Culture of Narcissism offers an astute and urgent analysis of what we need to know in these troubled times.

    McCoy, USMCIf you read one book in your lifetime on the warrior culture, this is that book. Active-duty Marine Colonel B. P. McCoy expertly relates his innermost thoughts and feelings, drawing on his mastery of personal leadership. Colonel McCoy understands the intangibles that make up our modern-day warriors, those young Americans on whom we place so much responsibility when we send them into harm's way.The author begins with the institutional design that leads some to believe that because of a manifestation of the American culture in which we're taught to kill from a young age through the use of video games, the task of a warrior would somehow be easily executed, based solely on these inequities. To the contrary, Colonel McCoy points out that the battlefield commander is hampered by the societal digression and the simple fact that young Americans can point a video weapon and kill, never feeling the true effects or suffering associated with actual combat. He explains that our culture is not that of predator, but more of prey. Through examples, he concludes that the American society places grave consequence on the taking of a human life, while we still require our young to bear arms against our enemies and to extinguish life. Only through superb training, conducted by passionate leaders, do our young Americans become moral warriors.Colonel McCoy describes the total cost of combat and the price paid by all who choose to become warriors. By pointing to positive training examples and keying on the effects of situational training—battle drills—conducted prior to and during combat, he successfully trained his Marines and developed the proper habits that would be the difference between life and death during combat. He directed his Marines to become "experts in the application of violence," without sacrificing their humanity. In the book, it became clear that he found the combination that allowed his men to achieve tactical superiority in every aspect.The essence of war is violence and the act of killing legitimate human targets without hesitation. To accomplish this, he instituted meaningful training and used his refined principles as a human being to guide him in the leadership and administration on the moral code that rules the field of battle. He is the perfect example of all that we hold dear in our warrior culture. He loved his men, showed them the right way through his personal example, guided his actions with passion and relayed his feelings to his men completely. He is quick to note his own shortcomings and how he overcame them and was the inspiration to the team that triumphed when all Marines survived the day.Emotionally riveting, The Passion of Command provides inside information into the warrior culture and allows one to grasp the complexities when hardening the mind, body, and spirit for the rigors of combat. Most find it difficult to communicate the human effects of combat to people who have never experienced the harsh realities associated with actually engaging an enemy. Colonel McCoy doesn't have that problem. He has opened the door and let the reader in

    Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions.

    These are the very same behaviors that typify good soldiering and foster a sense of belonging among troops, whether they’re fighting on the front lines or engaged in non-combat activities away from the action. Drawing from history, psychology, and anthropology, bestselling author Sebastian Junger shows us just how at odds the structure of modern society is with our tribal instincts, arguing that the difficulties many veterans face upon returning home from war do not stem entirely from the trauma they’ve suffered, but also from the individualist societies they must reintegrate into.A 2011 study by the Canadian Forces and Statistics Canada reveals that 78 percent of military suicides from 1972 to the end of 2006 involved veterans. Though these numbers present an implicit call to action, the government is only just taking steps now to address the problems veterans face when they return home. But can the government ever truly eliminate the challenges faced by returning veterans? Or is the problem deeper, woven into the very fabric of our modern existence? Perhaps our circumstances are not so bleak, and simply understanding that beneath our modern guises we all belong to one tribe or another would help us face not just the problems of our nation but of our individual lives as well.Well-researched and compellingly written, this timely look at how veterans react to coming home will reconceive our approach to veteran’s affairs and help us to repair our current social dynamic.

    It certainly drove writers Helen Razer and Bernard Keane to a desperate act: befriending each other for long enough to write a book.Join forces with these uneasy allies to fight against a world that has lost its reason. Explore what's behind the remorseless spread of idiocy, and why there's just so much damn Stupid around you.Stupid isn't just ignorance; it's not just laziness. Worse than the absence of thought, Stupid is a virus that drains our productivity and leaves us sick and diminished. And Stupid has a long, complex and terrible past, one we need to understand in order to defeat it.A Short History of Stupid traces the origins of this maddening ill, examining the different ways in which we've been afflicted over the last three thousand years. It damns those who have spread Stupid and celebrates the brave few who resisted. It shows how Stupid tightens the grubby grip of the foolish around our throats.Hilarious, smart, unpleasant, infuriating and rude, A Short History of Stupid is at once a provocation and a comfort. It will spark debate, soothe the terminally frustrated and outrage the righteously Stupid. It is a book whose Stupid time has come.

    She finds that the clubs provide an intermediate space—not work, not home—where men can enjoyably experience their bodies and selves through conversation, fantasy, and ritualized voyeurism. At the same time, she shows how the dynamics of male pleasure and privilege in strip clubs are intertwined with ideas about what it means to be a man in contemporary America.Frank’s ethnography draws on her work as an exotic dancer in five clubs, as well as on her interviews with over thirty regular customers—middle-class men in their late-twenties to mid-fifties. Reflecting on the customers’ dual desires for intimacy and visibility, she explores their paradoxical longings for "authentic" interactions with the dancers, the ways these aspirations are expressed within the highly controlled and regulated strip clubs, and how they relate to beliefs and fantasies about social class and gender. She considers how regular visits to strip clubs are not necessarily antithetical to marriage or long-term heterosexual relationships, but are based on particular beliefs about marriage and monogamy that make these clubs desirable venues. Looking at the relative "classiness" of the clubs where she worked—ranging from the city’s most prestigious clubs to some of its dive bars—she reveals how the clubs are differentiated by reputations, dress codes, cover charges, locations, and clientele, and describes how these distinctions become meaningful and erotic for the customers. Interspersed throughout the book are three fictional interludes that provide an intimate look at Frank’s experiences as a stripper—from the outfits to the gestures, conversations, management, coworkers, and, of course, the customers.Focusing on the experiences of the male clients, rather than those of the female sex workers, G-Strings and Sympathy provides a nuanced, lively, and tantalizing account of the stigmatized world of strip clubs.

    Beginning with a central problem that distinguishes sociology from most other ways of looking at the world, Randall Collins examines the limits of human rationality and sociological theories of religion, showing how they open up a general theory of social rituals that holds the key to much of the rest of sociology. With these conceptual tools in hand, he invites students to ponder how sociological analysis can illuminate a variety of urgent topics--power, crime, sex, love, and the position of women in society--as it reveals both their visible social symbols and their paradoxical deep structures. In a new final chapter, Collins stakes out an important role for sociology in the information age, while coming full circle to the theories of rationality and ritual with which he began, showing that artificial intelligence can approximate human creativity only if it can take part in ritual interactions. Uniquely engaging, Sociological Insight dramatizes the major issues and concerns of sociology in a way that gets students thinking and talking, and whets their appetites for more.

    Gottlieb, who suffered a traumatic injury that left him a quadriplegic over 30 years ago, is uniquely qualified to offer wise counsel on the relationship between what we want and what we have. He offers his thoughts on breaking patterns and habits, calming the unquiet mind, reconnecting with our emotions and our bodies, living in the moment, discovering that ineffable “something” that defines who we are—and above all, the importance of love.

    Skinner.

    Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 – from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the “insane” and the rest of humanity.