Customer Reviews

Inside Sociology

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Hughes and Kroehler have published introductory sociology books in various editions. Their Sociology: The Core is now in its 10th Edition. Inside Sociology is essentially the same book in a smaller format. A few more topics are covered in The Core compared with Inside Sociology, but not as many as one might expect since The Core is 545 pages compared to Inside Sociology's 368. The difference in the number of pages comes mostly from The Core's larger print, charts and images.

While both books are good, well-written introductions to sociology, I prefer Inside Sociology for its conciseness and lower cost. Carolyn Kroehler is a professional writer while Michael Hughes is a sociologist. One is tempted to think that she is the one who has made this such a readable book.

There are concepts such as social distance and measures of central tendency that are omitted in Inside Sociology that I wish had been included. But they are omitted in The Core as well.

For unknown reasons, McGraw-Hill has never really promoted Inside Sociology although it is evidently still in print. I am told that no new edition of Inside Sociology is planned. That's o.k. with me since there's not much new in Sociology: The Core 10th Edition (2011) compared with Inside Sociology (2007). Some data have been updated, but that doesn't change the important points. Does it really matter that the richest 20% of American families controlled 83.41% of the privately held wealth in 2007 compared with "only" 82.62% in 2001? The point is the same. A punctilious instructor might present more recent figures in class making the point that the rich have continued to grow richer over the last decade.

With no new edition, many used copies of Inside Sociology are available. Why not save your students some money?

If you want a concise text for an introductory sociology course, Inside Sociology is a good choice. And if it were to someday become unavailable, then one could easily switch to Sociology: The Core.

I got my book very quickly and was a decent price for it. I would recommend them! I will buy more books from them in the future!