100 books like The Victory of Reason

When I first read this book, even though I hold a Ph. D in sociology, it changed my whole view of the discipline. 

I was very disappointed in graduate school at first. Then I read some of Peter Berger’s works, who until his recent death, was the most well-known sociologist of religion. He wrote about making the case for a supernatural reality. This was something that was, and, still is, considered heretical in sociology. 

I met Peter a few years ago and told him how he changed my view of sociology. He smiled.

Since the recent passing of Peter Berger, Christian Smith is arguably the most well-known and influential sociologist working in the field of religion. 

In this book, Smith lays the groundwork for his vision of what it means to be a person, something so often overlooked in the social sciences. Smith claims that humans have a particular set of capacities and proclivities that distinguish them from animals. Despite the vast differences in humanity across cultures and historical eras, Smith offers the possibility that human beings have a universal human personhood. Humans, who, though part of the animal kingdom, are spiritual beings that have a moral and spiritual dimension.

This is something that I have been struggling with for years, and Smith simplified it.

The International Handbook of Christian Sociology brings together, under one cover, the latest in Christian scholarship. It’s truly an international work, in that it incorporates scholars from all over the world. It is invaluable as a reference book for understanding how Christian scholars understand the changing world.

In particular, the introductory essay by its editor, Dennis Hiebert, is, in my opinion, the best introduction to post-secularism and Christianity. Besides having a chapter in the book, I’m proud to have recommended Hiebert to Routledge when they asked for someone who could edit this book.

This book presents an alternative history of sociological theory. Sociological theory is usually seen as either emerging from the British and French philosophers of the 18th century or from the writings in the 19th century of Auguste Comte, generally considered to be the “father of sociology.” Beginning with the 12th century Scholastics, the influence of Christianity on science and social theory is discussed, and its influence is carried through today.

This book is so important to me because it represented the first time in print that I had declared I was a practicing Christian, something that is usually not done in sociology, which is one of the most, if not the most, secular of all the social sciences.

This country was settled primarily by Puritan extremists who imprinted their deep distrust of the body’s needs onto future generations. The Calvinist obsession with sin and predestination led to a uniquely American situation. As wealth became a sign of grace, poverty indicated moral failure.

Weber’s classic book describes the process in which a perspective that began in renunciation was transformed into the drive to work incessantly in the pursuit of worldly success and, eventually, conspicuous consumption. As the strictly religious fervor dissipated over time, the competitive quest for efficiency, productivity, wealth, and the self-validation they symbolized remained and became our most fundamental value.

What others would later call the “American Dream” endures because, like no other myth, it promises fulfillment both in this world and the next. This helped me understand our obsession with individualism and why America ignores or mistreats many of its children simply because their parents are… show more.

The important argument lying at the heart of this beautifully written book is that the trajectory of the current global economy, driven by neoliberal logics, is fundamentally one of expulsions: that is, expelling the poor, the biosphere, democracy, and anything else that gets in the way of maximizing profit. This book takes massive case studies—from palm oil production in Malaysia and Indonesia to water bottling by large corporations in the US—and demonstrates how they are ultimately about pushing people out instead of inviting people in. It raises important questions about who the economy is for, and what ends we are ultimately building toward as a global society. I don’t have a pithy personal story about this book; I just think you should read it.

My view of markets has been heavily influenced by my colleague from the Sociology Department downstairs, Neil Fligstein.

He follows Polanyi in posing a direct challenge to the basic assumptions of economics. He argues that firms seek stability, not necessarily profit maximization. That is, they want to stabilize prices and keep the firm intact.

He also brings power to the center of his view of markets. Incumbent firms engage in power struggles. They use business strategies, like collusion, and political strategies, like lobbying for favorable regulations, to insulate themselves from disruptive competition.

I could really choose any book by Slavoj Žižek as the starting for a psychoanalytic critique of capitalism, but this one is very accessible for someone who has never read him. It also gets into the current dilemmas that are rocking capitalist society. In this book, Žižek shows how psychoanalysis (combined with Hegel’s philosophy) can provide a corrective to the traditional Marxist critique of capitalism. We see here how the attempt to construct an ethical capitalism inevitably fails and obscures a new barbarism. 

Jules Boykoff has been writing about the Olympics for a very long time.

His work is smart, readable, well researched, and grounded in reality. He also happens to have been an Olympic soccer player. So he’s got credibility as a guy who values sports, yet still thinks the Olympics have a lot to answer for.

Celebration Capitalism is the book where Jules lays out his theory of how the Olympics, and other mega-sporting events, capitalize on sports celebrations to further enrich the rich, and impoverish the poor.

He builds on Naomi Klein’s concept of ‘disaster capitalism’ to make this argument, and in my opinion, it’s bang on. 

There is one current zeitgeist at the moment that everyone needs to know about - degrowth.

Jason Hickel’s book is one of the best accounts of how the whole world got tangled up in a ceaselessly growing economy and what we can do to reverse out of it.

This book has really helped me make the case with students, urban policymakers, and politicians that we need a new kind of economy that doesn’t just value growth or getting bigger, but one that respects the health of people and planet, and undoes some of the big injustices that have emerged from the long history of colonialism.