Essentials of Sociology

Essentials of Sociology, Third Edition, adapted from George Ritzer’s Introduction to Sociology, provides the same rock-solid foundation from one of sociology′s best-known thinkers in a shorter and more streamlined format. Ritzer and new co-author Wendy Wiedenhoft Murphy continue to illuminate traditional sociological concepts and theories and focus on some of the most compelling features of contemporary social life: globalization, consumer culture, the internet, and the "McDonaldization" of society. With examples on every page from current events and contemporary research, and stories about "public" sociologists who are engaging with the critical issues of today, the text demonstrates the power of sociology to explain the world and the diversity of questions that sociologists seek to answer.

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George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has also been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence Award. He was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association, an honorary doctorate from LaTrobe University in Australia, and the Robin Williams Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. His best-known work, The McDonaldization of Society (8th ed.), has been read by hundreds of thousands of students over two decades and translated into over a dozen languages. Ritzer is also the editor of McDonaldization: The Reader; and author of other works of critical sociology related to the McDonaldization thesis, including Enchanting a Disenchanted World, The Globalization of Nothing, Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, as well as a series best-selling social theory textbooks and Globalization: A Basic Text. He is the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2 vols.), the Encyclopedia of Sociology (11 vols.; 2nd edition forthcoming), the Encyclopedia of Globalization (5 vols.), and is Founding Editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. In 2016 he will publish the second edition of Essentials of Sociology with SAGE.

Wendy Wiedenhoft Murphy is a Professor of Sociology at John Carroll University, specializing in Environmental Sociology, Consumer Culture, and Sociological Theory. She is the author of Consumer Culture and Society (2017), co-editor (with George Ritzer) of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology, 2nd Edition (2020), and co-author (with George Ritzer) of  Introduction to Sociology, 5^th Edition (2019).