Pierre Bourdieu is one of the world's most important social theorists and is also one of the great empirical researchers in contemporary sociology. However, reading Bourdieu can be difficult for those not familiar with the French cultural context, and until now a comprehensive introduction to Bourdieu's oeuvre has not been available.
David Swartz focuses on a central theme in Bourdieu's work the complex relationship between culture and power and explains that sociology for Bourdieu is a mode of political intervention. Swartz clarifies Bourdieu's difficult concepts, noting where they have...

The author studied at Penn State, where he played no football, and Iowa, where he skirted the Workshop. He found God, lysergic acid, and despair in the Sixties, survived by getting that era into his art-some nineteen novels, twelve verse plays and more poetry than Browning.

"The Will to Christ" contains ambition, a paean to bipolar disorder, four dramatic monologues by major players in the genesis and termination of the only messiah he's known, poetry on a sustained level that is often frightening.

While the author has two other books and over a hundred poems in print, another ninety...

A terrifying descent into madness, the first fearful steps on the path to recovery, this uncompromising memoir captures all the urgent and hypnotic tension of a commercial thriller. "A Second Coming"-the companion volume to Swartz's great long-poem 'The Will to Christ"-is a probing investigation of the unconscious and metaphysical wellsprings of a singular poetic gift.

And yet it is more. This story is without question the most accurate portrayal to date of the largely uncharted regions of schizophrenia, a compelling and solitary journey into yogic meditation and a massive abuse of...

"FRAGments" is a book-length poem addressing, albeit obliquely, the fate of a glittering young man who departed the poet's world, first, from college in 1960, and then, later, by death, from a strangely prescient Vietnam, in 1967.

Megraw, beyond just memory, haunts five hard decades. The "hazel eyes, the perfect teeth, the preppy suits, the ease, the careless conversation, the impossible glitter" survive as simply "FRAGments."

The search is unending. "[Here. Oh. Sorry. No. Sorry. I am very sorry.] Deceased." A Friday morning phone call in 1982 and the concluding ["There. JUST . . ....

Six dark fictions with a cosmic scope and a delirious immediacy, these shorter pieces (2 novellas and 4 one-acts) are an aspect of Swartz's gift many will find welcome, others hugely unsettling.

"The Old Man and the Bird, " the concluding sequence of a befuddled Harry Ricci, could be taken as a "neo-conservatively-grotesque" parable. From there it is a short stroll to Burt Spew in "Snappers," a madcap Armageddon of its own and parody of "Jaws."

We have as well such oddities as "The Damnation of Winston Pollock," the saga of a disgruntled software wizard; "The Gift Horse and the Gift,"...