The articles in this volume cover a wide range of intellectually exciting issues, written by people who were considered at the summit of their fields of enquiry. Though the individual topics addressed are diverse, each article can be taken as representative of 'humanistic understanding' of its stated subject. The volume is the first of a series based upon lectures given under the auspices of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Practicing Culture seeks to revitalize the field of cultural sociology with an emphasis not on abstract theoretical debates but on showing how to put theoretical sources to work in empirical research. Culture is not just products and representations but practices. It is made and remade in countless small ways and occasional bursts of innovation. It is something people do - and do in rich variety and distinctive contexts as engaging case studies from the book reveal. For example: in Russia's most Western city, Kaliningrad, residents dig for artifacts symbolizing a German past - even though their parents only migrated to what was once Konigsberg after WWII in the USA, fans of professional wrestling pride themselves on being smart enough to know how much is trickery and how the tricks work yet still believe in the contest. Practicing Culture will reshape and invigorate the sociology of culture, not only through internal development, but through enhanced connections to the interdisciplinary social theory and to related fields like the sociology of knowledge and ethnography. It will prove an essential tool for students and researchers of cultural theory, contemporary social theory and cultural sociology.

Provocative and enlightening, Richard Sennett's The Craftsman is an exploration of craftsmanship - the desire to do a job well for its own sake - as a template for living. Most of us have to work. But is work just a means to an end? In trying to make a living, have we lost touch with the idea of making things well? Pure competition, Sennett shows, will never produce good work. Instead, the values of the craftsman, whether in a Stradivari violin workshop or a modern laboratory, can enrich our lives and change the way we anchor ourselves in the world around us. The past lives of crafts and craftsmen show us ways of working - using tools, acquiring skills, thinking about materials - which provide rewarding alternative ways for people to utilise their talents. We need to recognize this if motivations are to be understood and lives made as fulfilling as possible. 'Lively, engaging and pertinent ... a lifetime's learning has gone into the writing of this book' Roger Scruton, Sunday Times 'An enchanting writer with important things to say' Fiona MacCarthy, Guardian 'Enthralling ... Sennett is keen to reconnect thinking with making, to revive the simple pleasure in the everyday object and the useful task. There is something here for all of us' Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times 'A masterpiece' Boyd Tonkin, Independent Richard Sennett's previous books include The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone and Respect. He was founder director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and is now University Professor at New York University and Academic Governor and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

Practicing Culture seeks to revitalize the field of cultural sociology with an emphasis not on abstract theoretical debates but on showing how to put theoretical sources to work in empirical research. Culture is not just products and representations but practices. It is made and remade in countless small ways and occasional bursts of innovation. It is something people do - and do in rich variety and distinctive contexts as engaging case studies from the book reveal. For example;

• in Russia's most Western city, Kaliningrad, residents dig for artifacts symbolizing a German past - even though their parents only migrated to what was once Konigsberg after WWII
• in the USA, fans of professional wrestling pride themselves on being smart enough to know how much is trickery and how the tricks work yet still believe in the contest.

Practicing Culture will reshape and invigorate the sociology of culture not only through internal development but through enhanced connections to the interdisciplinary social theory and to related fields like the sociology of knowledge and ethnography. It will prove an essential tool for students and researchers of cultural theory, contemporary social theory and cultural sociology.

In this reissue of the 1972 classic of social anatomy, Richard Sennets adds a new introduction to shows how the injuries of class persist into the 21st century. In this intrepid, groundbreaking book, Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb uncover and define a new form of class conflict in America?an internal conflict in the heart and mind of the blue-collar worker who measures his own value against those lives and occupations to which our society gives a special premium.The authors conclude that in the games of hierarchical respect, no class can emerge the victor; and that true egalitarianism can be achieved only by rediscovering diverse concepts of human dignity. Examining personal feelings in terms of a totality of human relations, and looking beyond the struggle for economic survival, The Hidden Injuries of Class takes an important step forward in the sociological critique of everyday life.

When first published in 1970, The Uses of Disorder, was a call to arms against the deadening hand of modernist urban planning upon the thriving chaotic city. Written in the aftermath of the 1968 student uprising in the US and Europe, it demands a reimagination of the city and how class, city life and identity combine. Too often, this leads to divisions, such as the middle class flight to the suburbs, leaving the inner cities in desperate straits. In response, Sennett offers an alternative image of a "dense, disorderly, overwhelming cities" that allow for change and the development of community. Fifty years later this book is as essential as it was when it first came out, and remains an inspiration to architects, planners and urban thinkers everywhere.

In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett, "among the country's most distinguished thinkers . . . has concentrated into 176 pages a profoundly affecting argument" (Business Week) that draws on interviews with dismissed IBM executives, bakers, a bartender turned advertising executive, and many others to call into question the terms of our new economy. In his 1972 classic, The Hidden Injuries of Class (written with Jonathan Cobb), Sennett interviewed a man he called Enrico, a hardworking janitor whose life was structured by a union pay schedule and given meaning by his sacrifices for the future. In this new book-a #1 bestseller in Germany-Sennett explores the contemporary scene characterized by Enrico's son, Rico, whose life is more materially successful, yet whose work lacks long-term commitments or loyalties. Distinguished by Sennett's "combination of broad historical and literary learning and a reporter's willingness to walk into a store or factory [and] strike up a conversation" (New York Times Book Review), this book "challenges the reader to decide whether the flexibility of modern capitalism . . . is merely a fresh form of oppression" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Praise for The Corrosion of Character: "A benchmark for our time."-Daniel Bell "[A]n incredibly insightful book."-William Julius Wilson "[A] remarkable synthesis of acute empirical observation and serious moral reflection."-Richard Rorty "[Sennett] offers abundant fresh insights . . . illuminated by his concern with people's struggle to give meaning to their lives."-[Memphis] Commercial Appeal

"The Lonely Crowd . . . remains not only the best-selling book by a professional sociologist in American history, but arguably one that has had the widest influence on the nation at large."-Orlando Patterson, New York Times Considered by many to be one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, The Lonely Crowd opened exciting new dimensions in our understanding of the problems confronting the individual in twentieth-century America. Richard Sennett's new introduction illuminates the ways in which Riesman's analysis of a middle class obsessed with how others lived still resonates in the age of social media. "Indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand American society. After half a century, this book has lost none of its capacity to make sense of how we live."-Todd Gitlin "One of the most important books of the twentieth century."-Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker "Brilliant and original."-Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. "The Lonely Crowd remains at least as instructive now as it was in 1950, all the more so as the reality it perceived closes in on us."-Jonathan Yardley, New Republic

An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinker 'All the world's a stage' declares the melancholy Jacques in Shakespeare's As You Like It. Today that's an unhappy thought. A cluster of demagogues has recently dominated the public realm through their powers as actors; they are brilliant performers. More unsettling, the demagogue, the dancer, the musician all share the same non-verbal realm of bodily gestures, lighting and blocking, costuming, stage architecture. So too, the roles and rituals of everyday life and everyday acting can be malign or sublime, repressive or liberating. Performing constitutes one art - an ambiguous art. In this book, the acclaimed sociologist Richard Sennett explores uncomfortable connections between performances in life, art, and politics. He draws on his own early career as a professional cellist as well on histories both Western and non-Western. He is not a pessimist; at the end of his study, he shows how this ambiguous art might become more ethical.

'Thank god for Richard Sennett ... essential reading for all students of the city' Anna Minton, Prospect 'Constantly stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking' Jonathan Meades, Guardian In Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime's thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. He shows how the design of cities can enrich or diminish the everyday experience of those who dwell in them. The book ranges widely - from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia - and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett's many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn't, and why. He shows what works ethically is often the most practical solution for cities' problems. This is a humane and thrilling book, which allows us to think freshly about how we live in cities. 'Sennett is my kind of urbanist. He sees the modern city. He reads its secrets as he walks down the street, kicking over the detritus of the past ... There is no alternative to the planner, but please a planner who has read Sennett's book' Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times

Are we now so self-absorbed that we take little interest in the world beyond our own lives? Or has public life left no place for individuals to participate?

The Fall of Public Man examines the imbalance between private and public experience, and the decline of involvement in political life in recent decades. Tracing the changing nature of urban society from the eighteenth century to the world we now live in, Richard Sennett discusses the causes of our social withdrawal and asks what can bring us to reconnect with our communities. His landmark study of the imbalance of modern civilization provides a fascinating perspective on the relationship between public life and the cult of the individual.

"An entralling subject. . . . A compassionate and inquiring [book]." —Richard Jenkyns, New York Review of Books

This vivid history of the city in Western civilization tells the story of urban life through bodily experience. Flesh and Stone is the story of the deepest parts of life—how women and men moved in public and private spaces, what they saw and heard, the smells that assailed them, where they ate, how they dressed, the mores of bathing and of making love—all in the architecture of stone and space from ancient Athens to modern New York.

Early in Flesh and Stone Richard Sennett probes the ways in which the ancient Athenians experienced nakedness, and the relation of nakedness to the shape of the ancient city, its troubled politics, and the inequalities between men and women. The story then moves to Rome in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, exploring Roman beliefs in the geometrical perfection of the body.

The second part of the book examines how Christian beliefs about the body related to the Christian city—the Venetian ghetto, cloisters, and markets in Paris. The final part of Flesh and Stone deals with what happened to urban space as modern scientific understanding of the body cut free from pagan and Christian beliefs. Flesh and Stone makes sense of our constantly evolving urban living spaces, helping us to build a common home for the increased diversity of bodies that make up the modern city.

"Fascinating . . . the drama of urban life springs alive for the reader." —Chicago Tribune "Flesh and Stone is a fascinating excursion with an erudite guide. Sennett writes with intelligence and grace. . . ." —Washington Post Book World

A sweeping, farsighted study of the changing nature of public culture and urban society, The Fall of Public Man spans more than two centuries of Western sociopolitical evolution and investigates the causes of our declining involvement in political life. Richard Sennett’s insights into the danger of the cult of individualism remain thoroughly relevant to our world today. In a new epilogue, he extends his analysis to the new “public� realm of social media, questioning how public culture has fared since the digital revolution.

Emile Durkheim's On Suicide (1897) was a groundbreaking book in the field of sociology. Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a matter of purely individual despair but Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed that if anything can explain how individuals relate to society, then it is suicide: Why does it happen? What goes wrong? Why do certain social, religious or racial groups have higher incidences of suicide than others? As Durkheim explored these questions he became convinced that abnormally high or low levels of social integration lead to an increased likelihood of suicide. On Suicide was the result of his extensive research. Divided into three parts - individual reasons for suicide, social forms of suicide and the relation of suicide to society as a whole - Durkheim's revelations have fascinated, challenged and informed readers for over a century.

Living with people who differ - racially, ethnically, religiously or economically - is one of the most urgent challenges facing civil society today. Together argues that co-operation needs more than good will: it is a craft that requires skill. In modern society traditional bonds are waning, and we must develop new forms of secular, civic ritual that make us more skilful in living with others. From Medieval guilds to today's social networks, Richard Sennett's visionary book explores the nature of co-operation, why it has become weak and how it can be strengthened.