Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology

by Patrick Nolan, Gerhard Lenski

Taking a macrosociological, global approach, Human Societies offers an introduction to sociology that is truly comparative, cross-cultural, and historical. It compares societies over time and across environments, emphasizing the dynamics of social change. Its clearly developed ecological-evolutionary perspective provides a powerful theoretical framework for understanding the array of social arrangements found in human societies over the past 100,000 years. Since industrial societies are encountered only after this theoretical base has been firmly established and older, simpler, and smaller societies have been examined in detail, students see their own society (and other contemporary societies) in a broader and more meaningful way. By showing how social arrangements are related to the environmental and technological context societies are situated in, HumanSocieties encourages students to look for the reasons why social arrangements are the way they are, and why they change over time.
New to this Edition
* Two new readings: The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends That Will Change The World, by Jack A. Goldstone, and Disaster Watch, by Joel A. Cohen (New readings are coupled with assignments and questions for classroom discussion, paper topics, and focus groups)
* A new Teaching and Learning Supplement on the future--the supplement includes an introduction that explains how teachers and students can use the long-term conceptual tools introduced in Human Societies to assess future world developments in demography, culture, politics, economies, and even on such specific topics as terrorism

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction

426 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

Reviews

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the textbook for my undergraduate introductory sociology class.
For a textbook, it's pretty readable, and it is formatted more like a regular non-fiction book than a textbook. If one was looking to do independent study on sociology, I think this textbook would be a nice candidate for reading outside a class.
However, the later chapters are kinda Islamophobic and there's a weird paragraph that argues that climate change isn't caused by humans, and that left a bitter taste in my mouth.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my majors is Sociology, so I was hoping that this book would be fascinating. It wasn't. Though the subject matter was interesting enough, the book came off a little drab and unexciting, and has made me rethink my choice to double-major in Sociology. I did enjoy some aspects of the book, and found it to be interesting and knowledgeable in several aspects, but I the emotion I ended up feeling the most while reading this book was "bored". Unfortunately. I would like to see if I could read this outside of a school setting - I think I would possibly find this more interesting. I did like this book, and I still love and am fascinated by the subject, but it was still a little difficult to get through.