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  • This is a list of the 51 most important/influential books of American Sociology*, post-WWII through 1993.

    1. Berelson, Bernard, Lazarsfeld, Paul and William McPhee. 1954. Voting. University of Chicago Press.
    2. Bell, Daniel. 1973. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Basic Books.
    3. -----. 1976. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Basic Books.
    4. Bellah, Robert et al. 1985. Habits of the Heart. University of California Press.
    5. Berger, Peter. 1963. Invitation to Sociology. Anchor Books.
    6. ----- and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. Doubleday.
    7. Bernstein, Basil. 1971. Class, Codes, and Control, vol. I. Routledge, Kegan, Paul.
    8. Blau, Peter and Otis Dudley Duncan. 1967. The American Occupational Structure. Wiley.
    9. Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America. Basic Books.
    10. Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor & Monopoly Capital. Monthly Review.
    11. DeVault, Marjorie L. 1991. Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work. University of Chicago Press.
    12. Edwards, Richard. 1979. Contested Terrain. Basic Books.
    13. Erikson, Kai. 1968. Wayward Puritans. Macmillan.
    14. Gamson, William. 1975, 1990. The Strategy of Social Protest. Wadsworth.
    15. Gans, Herbert. 1962. Urban Villagers. Free Press.
    16. -----. 1967. The Levittowners: Ways of Life & Politics in a New Suburban Community. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
    17. Giddens, Anthony. 1973. The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies. Harper.
    18. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. Harper & Row.
    19. -----. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday.
    20. Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. Johns Hopkins.
    21. -----. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell.
    22. Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966. University of California Press.
    23. Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House.
    24. Kohn, Melvin. 1969. Class and Conformity: A Study in Values. Dorsey.
    25. Kornhauser, William. 1959. The Politics of Mass Society. Free Press.
    26. Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edition. University of Chicago Press.
    27. Laslett, Peter. 1965. The World We Have Lost. Scribner's.
    28. Liebow, Elliot. 1967. Tally's Corner. Little Brown.
    29. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1960. Political Man. Doubleday.
    30. -----, Martin Trow, and James Coleman, 1956. Union Democracy. Free Press.
    31. Logan, John and Harvey Molotch. 1987. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Space. University of California Press.
    32. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid. Harvard.
    33. McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. Oxford.
    34. Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory & Social Structure. Free Press.
    35. Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford.
    36. -----. 1951. White Collar. Oxford.
    37. Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Beacon.
    38. O'Connor, James. 1973. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. St. Martin's.
    39. Piven, Francis Fox, and Richard Cloward. 1977. Poor People's Movements. Random.
    40. -----. 1971, 1993. Regulating the Poor. Vintage.
    41. Polanyi, Karl. 1944, 1957. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press.
    42. Reisman, David. 1951, 1969. The Lonely Crowd. Yale University Press.
    43. Sennett, Richard and Jonathan Cobb. 1972. The Hidden Injuries of Class. Random.
    44. Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge.
    45. Starr, Paul. 1982. The Transformation of American Medicine. Basic Books.
    46. Thompson, E.P. 1963. The Making of the English Working Class. Random House.
    47. Tilly, Charles. 1975. The Rebellious Century. Harvard University Press.
    48. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World System. Academic Press.
    49. Wilson, William J. 1978. The Declining Significance of Race. Chicago.
    50. -----. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged. Chicago.
    51. Wright, Erik Olin. 1978. Class, Crisis, and the State. New Left Books.

    * Alphabetical by author's name. Includes largely American sociological materials only published between post-WWII and 1993; and largely eschews "theoretical" works.

    Send suggestions for other modern sociological "classics" to devine@tulane.edu