The Homeless Mind

By Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger, Hansfried Kellner

Book cover of The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness

Book description

The authors seek to explain the social nature of the processes of modernization and the hegemony of ideas and ways of thinking that constitute the modern outlook.

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Homeless Mind as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I have taught many books on “modernity” or the modern world. This is the one single volume I would pick for students on a deserted island. I love reading it and love teaching it.

Berger applies the most important parts of social theory in a readable way to analyze what it’s like to work, love, and live in a modern versus traditional society. He shows how modernization permanently generates “discontents.” We love it, and we hate it, and most of the critics of modernity can’t help being modern themselves.

There is a chapter on dueling, which students never forget! 

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