This engaging and accessible reader takes a social problems approach to health and medicine, providing a broad and critical lens on contemporary health problems. Designed for courses on social problems and on medical sociology, the volume embraces two fundamental principles: that health and illness are at least partly socially produced, and that health care is not an unfettered good and often brings with it serious social problems. The volume is organized into six sections, addressing the medicalization of human problems; the social construction of health problems; social movements; gender; race and class and the provision of health care; and medical accountability. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the depth and richness of a social problems approach to health and medicine, and the critical perspective it brings to our understanding of health and illness in U.S. society.

Unbinding the Binding of Isaac is an anthology of three faiths' interpretations of the Genesis 22:1-19 story. The various exegeses of this story have been mined by the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths for a protracted period of time. The "Aqedah," as the binding story is known universally, stimulates the interests and imaginations of theologians, linguists, poets, historians, and artists of various skills and stripes. The Aqedah continues to stimulate inquiry and application to modern situations. Unbinding the Binding of Isaac is at once ancient and modern in its scope, purpose, and relevance to scholarly inquiry regarding this ongoing debate.