Graduate Program

Suggested Reading

Print the suggested reading list (PDF) >

The following books represent a highly selective list from a larger pool suggested by department faculty members. The mix is eclectic. While some are not now and may never become classics, all are important books that reflect the varied styles of thinking in sociology and related social sciences.

You may want to read some from cover to cover this summer, browse others, and save a few for later. The list is updated each year.

Note that a separate list at the bottom is reserved for books that do cover classical ideas in the discipline. We especially encourage these to students who do not yet have a thorough academic background in sociology.

Topical Perspectives

  1. Becker, Howard S. (2nd Ed., 1991). Outsiders.
  2. Bourdieu, Pierre, Ed. by John Thompson (1991). Language and Symbolic Power.
  3. Butler, Judith (2nd. Ed., 1999). Gender Trouble.
  4. Fischer, Claude, et al. (1996). Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth.
  5. Gaventa, John (1982). Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an
    Appalachian Valley.
  6. Goffman, Irving (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
  7. Habermas, Jurgen (1972). Knowledge and Human Interests.
  8. Hochschild, Arlie (2nd. Ed., 2003). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feelings.
  9. Mills, C. Wright (various Eds.). The Sociological Imagination.
  10. Massey, Douglas, and Nancy Denton (2001). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.
  11. Wuthnow, Robert (1989). Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure
    in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism.

General Works

  1. Bruce, Steve (1999). Sociology: A Very Brief Introduction.
  2. Coser, Lewis A. (2nd Ed., 2003). Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context.
  3. Durkheim, Emile (various Eds.). The Division of Labor in Society.
  4. Durkheim, Emile (various Eds.). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
  5. Gerth, Hans, and C. Wright Mills, Eds. (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology.
  6. Smelser, Neil (1995). Problematics of Sociology: The Georg Simmel Lectures.