You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist (Second Edition) - Softcover

Dalton Conley is a professor of sociology at Princeton University. In 2005, Conley became the first sociologist to win the prestigious National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award, which honors an outstanding young U.S. scientist or engineer. He writes for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Slate, and Forbes. He is the author of Honky (2001) and The Pecking Order: A Bold New Look at How Family and Society Determine Who We Become (2004). His other books include Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (1999), The Starting Gate: Birth Weight and Life Chances (2003), and Elsewhere, U.S.A. (2009). You can follow Dalton Conley on Twitter at @daltonconley.

“I admit I assigned You May Ask Yourself mostly because of the cost to my students. However, after teaching from it, I find it is better than any text I have ever used. The chapters are interesting and thorough. In fact, I believe the chapters on gender and race are the best I have ever used. Dalton Conley also does a great job of integrating race and gender into every chapter. He covers a great deal of material, reflects important and recent research, and presents it in ways that students can understand.”
- Joan E. Manley, Florida Gulf Coast University

“Your students will be captured by Conley’s conversational style and drawn into reading the text before they know what hit them. Conley provides a thorough discussion of theory with relevant past and contemporary examples. Further, he challenges the students to question what they’ve taken for granted most of their lives.”
- Cheryl Maes, University of Nevada, Reno

“Rather than bombarding students with lots of statistics, Dalton Conley seems more concerned with getting the ‘big ideas’ of the discipline across, and to encourage them to ask meaningful questions.”
- Michael Nofz, University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac

“Conley's text has filled an important niche for the community college needs. It is affordable, readable, colorful, and yet has fewer pages to read, which is an important consideration for my beginning-level community college students, and has examples that my young students can relate to.”
- Sharon Warner Methvin, Mt. Hood Community College

“Hip, splashy, youthful, concise, emotive, provocative, unpretentious, sharp, with a fresh take on the issues.”
- Jennifer Schultz, The University of Arizona

“You May Ask Yourself represents a departure from the typical cookie-cutter approach that characterizes most introductory texts. The best sociology textbooks read like storybooks, and students are actually interested in doing the readings. This book has the potential for approaching that standard.”
- Ralph Pyle, Michigan State University

“Dalton Conley's You May Ask Yourself is a refreshingly different non-textbook book that I'd strongly encourage others to explore.”
- Brian Powell, Indiana University