Amazon.com description: Product Description: The medical sociology course looks at the distribution of health and illness, the nature of the health care system, the roles of mainstream and alternative health care providers, and the experiences of those who live with illness or disability. Rose Weitz adds to this traditional subject matter a critical approach which emphasizes the effects of power, such as how gender, ethnicity, and social class affect individuals' experiences of health and illness and how social forces create illness and affect our ideas about the nature of illness. This text concentrates on health within the United States, but also looks at health care issues globally in order to provide a perspective to the American experience. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the field of sociology of health, including both micro- and macro-level topics. It emphasizes the sociological issues far more than the other available textbooks. The book is highly readable, and grabs students attention in a way that is rare for a textbook. It has been thoroughly updated; more than 40 percent of the references were published in the last five years.