Product Description: Energy is at the top of the list of environmental problems facing industrial society, and is arguably the one that has been handled least successfully, in part because politicians and the public do not understand the physical technologies, while the engineers and industrialists do not understand the societal forces in which they operate...read more

Product Description: Why do people accept ideas that are contradicted by science or logic? In Implausible Beliefs, Allan Mazur offers a comparative look at the nature of irrational belief systems, their social roots, and their cultural and political impact...read more

Product Description: While conventional social problems textbooks focus on issues in the United States, Global Social Problems examines major problems around the world. Beginning with a broad history of how humanity came to be divided along its present major social cleavages, the text then turns to the specific problems of war, social inequality, population, and resources and environment...read more

Biology―perhaps the most exciting science of the last half-century―is reaching into scholarly disciplines throughout academia, yet sociology has barely entertained it. The reasons for hesitation are clear enough. Sociobiology and ethology have been unappealing to sociologists because they explain human behavior the same way they explain the behavior of social insects, fish, and birds; often evoking images of sexism and Social Darwinism, both anathemas to modern sociologists. Nonetheless, sociologists do show growing interest in biology and what it can contribute to their discipline. In this short, engaging volume Allan Mazur develops new and sociologically sophisticated concepts to bring these fields together. His book is about the social biology of face-to-face dominance interactions and it explores the evolution of behavior through connections among biology, language, culture, and socialization. Topics include comparative primate behavior, physiological and brain mechanisms underlying status processes, and the relevance of the body surface (face, physique, gestures) to status allocation. The book is meant to be a self-contained exploration―sociologists would require no prior knowledge of biology; biologists would require no prior knowledge of sociology―and a fun, informative supplement for courses throughout sociology and the social sciences.

Product Description: Given time, scientists reach consensus about the truth or falsity of a wide range of alleged hazards. Today, there is broad agreement that CFCs destroy stratospheric ozone. On the other hand, research does not support claims that electromagnetic fields from transmission lines cause a noticeable increase of leukemia...read more

Product Description: Love Canal. We hear these words and quickly recoil, remembering a community poisoned by toxic waste. Twenty years after the incident, Allan Mazur reexamines the circumstances that made this upstate New York neighborhood synonymous with ecological catastrophe and triggered federal "Superfund" legislation to clean up the nation's thousands of hazardous waste sites...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)