Thorstein Veblen is best known for his authorship of "The Theory of the Leisure Class" and "The Theory of Business Enterprise", which made him a celebrated figure in the fields of economics and sociology at the turn of the twentieth century. In this book, Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman argue that in addition to his well-known work in these fields Veblen also made important - and until now overlooked - statements about politics. While Veblen's writings seldom mention politics, they are saturated with political ideas: about the relationship between war, executive power, and democracy; about the similarities between modern executive positions and monarchy; about the political influence of corporate power; about the symbolism of politics; and about many other issues. By demonstrating the deep relevance of Veblen's writings to today's political troubles, "The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen" offers an important reconsideration of a major American thinker.
Occupy Wall Street was the most covered news story of 2011. Among those who followed the movement like a storm chaser, Boston Phoenix Staff Writer Chris Faraone is one of the few who blogged about daily Occupy minutiae, but also stepped back to smoke lots of weed, investigate and analyze the protest, and deliver weekly features. Starting in September, Faraone published a series of deep Occupy portraits, traveling to more than a dozen cities from Boston to Seattle. His work illustrates day-to-day Occupy operations, as well the characters who make the movement tick. In the process, he also landed nationwide exclusives, like a scoop on a federation of police officers who support Occupy.Though Faraone is to the left of liberal, he wrote with a balanced reporter's eye, in many cases aggravating readers on both sides of the ideological aisle. Ignoring partisan preferences, Faraone dug for the root of topics ranging from an accused thief who moved between camps, to a veteran anarchist who was inspired by Occupy to come out from underground. As was noted in a recent Columbia Journalism Review profile of Faraone, his approach to covering Occupy was wholly unique, as he became "a one-man swarm: embedding full-time at Boston's Dewey Square encampment; visiting other movements around the country; juggling feature stories, blog posts, radio spots, and Twitter fights."99 Nights with the 99 Percent is a collection of Faraone's published posts and articles on Occupy, streamlined into a sleek edition that also packs unpublished pieces and a number of bonus features. In addition to pics and illustrations, a series of haiku poems - or "Occupaikus" - run throughout the book, taking readers through a timeline of the first 100 days of the national movement. There are other books on Occupy, but 99 Nights is in a category of its own.
In recent years, sociologists have taken up a fruitful examination of institutions such as capital, labor, and product markets; industrial organization; and stock exchanges. Compared to earlier traditions of economic sociology, recent work shows more interest in phenomena usually studied exclusively by economists. At the same time, recent work challenges the adequacy of the neoclassical model. In "The Sociology of Economic Life," editors Granovetter and Swedberg incorporate classic and contemporary readings in economic sociology and related disciplines to provide students with a broad understanding of the many dimensions of economic life. A thorough and accessible introduction by the editors traces the history of thought in the field and assesses recent advances and future trends. The third edition is substantially revised and updated with eight new chapters, including original contributions from some of the field's leading scholars that explain cutting-edge research and critically review the essential scholarship in the field.
