Rigging the Game: How Inequality Is Reproduced in Everyday Life

In Rigging the Game--a brief, accessible introduction to the study of inequality in American society--Michael Schwalbe investigates how inequality is both created and reproduced. Guided by the questions How did the situation get this way? and How does it stay this way?, Schwalbe tracks inequality from its roots to its regulation. In the final chapter, "Escaping the Inequality Trap," he also shows how inequality can be overcome. Throughout, Schwalbe's engaging writing style draws students into the material, providing instructors with a solid foundation for discussing this challenging and provocative subject.

With its lively combination of incisive analysis and compelling fictional narratives, Rigging the Game is an innovative teaching tool--not only for courses on stratification, but also for social problems courses, introductory sociology courses, and any course that takes a close look at how the inequalities of race, class, and gender are perpetuated.

Michael Schwalbe is a professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. He is author of Unlocking the Iron Cage: The Men's Movement, Gender Politics, and American Culture (1996), Remembering Reet and Shine: Two Black Men, One Struggle (2004), and The Sociologically Examined Life, Fourth Edition (2008).