Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life

Using vivid prose, current examples, and fresh data, the Fifteenth Edition of Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life presents a unique and thought-provoking overview of how society is constructed and experienced. Author David M. Newman shows students how to see the "unfamiliar in the familiar"—to step back and see organization and predictability in their take-for-granted personal experiences. With his approachable writing style and lively anecdotes, Newman's goal from the first edition has been the same: to write a textbook that "reads like a real book." Many adopters of this book are fans of Peter Berger's classic works, which helped introduce the idea of "social constructionism" to sociology. Newman uses the metaphors of "architecture" and "construction" to help students understand that society is not something that exists "out there," independently of themselves; it is a human creation that is planned, maintained, or altered by individuals.