Social Science

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an econo-mist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world. more...

Price: $19.95

A new edition of the internationally successful, user-friendly guide that takes students and researchers through the often daunting process of analysing research data with the widely-used SPSS software package. Fully revised and updated for SPSS Version 12, it features examples from a wide range of disciplines. more...

Price: $31.95

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. more...

Price: $9.95

Bushido, meaning "Way of the Warrior", is a Japanese code of conduct and a way of life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery and honour unto death. Born of two main influences, the violent existence of the Samurai was tempered by the wisdom and serenity of Confucianism and Buddhism. Bushido developed between the 9th to 12th centuries and numerous translated documents dating from the 12th to 16th centuries demonstrate its wide influence across the whole of Japan. According to the Japanese dictionary Shogakukan Kokugo Daijiten , "Bushido is defined as a unique philosophy ( ronri ) that spread through the warrior class from the Muromachi ( chusei ) period." Nitobe Inazo, in his book Bushido: The Soul of Japan , described it in this way. "...Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the samurai were required or instructed to observe... More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten... It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career.". Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, aspects of Bushido became formalized into Japanese Feudal Law. Translation of documents related to Bushido began in the 1970's with Dr. Carl Steenstrup who performed a lifetime of research into the ethical codes of famous Samurai clans including Hojo Soun and Imagawa Ryoshun. Steenstrup's 1977 dissertation at Harvard University was entitled "Hojo Shigetoki (1198–1261) and his Role in the History of Political and Ethical Ideas in Japan". Steenstrup holds two Phd's in Japanese History--one from Harvard in 1977 and another from The University of Copenhagen in 1979. According to the editors of Monumenta Nipponica, "Tens of thousands of documents survive from the medieval period... Only a few have been translated into English, or are likely ever to appear in translation." One of the oldest English-language ac more...

Price: $5.99

High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the ''specter of the fag'' becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the ''fag discourse'' is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality. more...

Price: $19.95