Socjologia i społeczeństwo

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries...

In 1955 the killers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi youth, were acquitted because they were white. Forty years later, despite the strong DNA evidence against him, accused murderer O. J. Simpson went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. The age of white supremacy has given way to an age of white guilt--and neither has been good for African Americans.

Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.

In 1946, Elizabeth Short traveled to Hollywood to become famous and see her name up in lights. Instead, the dark-haired beauty became immortalized in the headlines as the "Black Dahlia" when her nude and bisected body was discovered in the weeds of a vacant lot. Despite the efforts of more than four hundred police officers and homicide investigators, the heinous crime was never solved. Now, after endless speculation and false claims, bestselling author Donald H. Wolfe discovers startling new evidence--buried in the files of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office for more than half a...

Black women have been balancing the competing demands of work and home since before women even won the right to vote. But black voices are barely acknowledged in the mainstream "mommy wars" dialogue. Lonnae O'Neal Parker is determined to change that, in this uncommonly smart, highly acclaimed, and often witty examination--part memoir, part reportage--of how today's black women meet the challenges of marriage, motherhood, and work.

Five years after escaping into the mountains of North Carolina, Eric Rudolph was becoming a figure of folk legend. The FBI had long since abandoned its manhunt--the largest ever on U.S. soil--for the fugitive accused of bombing the Atlanta Olympics, two abortion clinics, and a gay bar. Then, one night, Rudolph got careless; he was arrested and put in jail--possibly forever. But even in custody, he remained unrepentant . . . and an enigma.

In Lone Wolf, Maryanne Vollers brings the reader deep inside one of the most sensational cases of domestic terrorism in American history....

Colorfully written by two popular and respected sociologists, this volume shows how sociology has evolved, how it became divided from Christian faith, and how Christian sociologists can make sense of this branch of social science.

Controversy rages about capital punishment as innocent men and women are being released from death rows all over the country. Are innocent people being executed? Is capital punishment justice or is it revenge?

Into the debate steps Mark Fuhrman, America's most famous detective, and no stranger to controversy himself.

Fuhrman seeks to answer these questions by investigating the death penalty in Oklahoma, where a "hang 'em high" attitude of cowboy justice resulted in twenty-one executions in 2001, more than any other state. Most of these cases came from one...

The 1960s was a time of social and generational upheaval felt with particular intensity in the melting pot of New York City. A culture of corruption pervaded the New York Police Department, where payoffs, protection, and shakedowns of gambling rackets and drug dealers were common practice. The so-called blue code of silence protected the minority of crooked cops from the sanction of the majority.

Into this maelstrom came a working class, Brooklyn-born, Italian cop with long hair, a beard, and a taste for opera and ballet. Frank Serpico was a man who couldn't be silenced -- or bought...

The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha...

In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking murder that fits the pattern of the infamous Boston Strangler, still at large. Hoping for a break in the case, the police arrest Roy Smith, a black ex-con whom the victim hired to clean her house. Smith is hastily convicted of the murder, but the Strangler's terror continues. And through it all, one man escapes the scrutiny of the police: a carpenter working at the time at the Belmont home of young Sebastian Junger and his parents--a man named Albert

From the acclaimed author of A Perfect...

Marilyn Johnson was enthralled by the remarkable lives that were marching out of this world--so she sought out the best obits in the English language and the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all. Now she leads us on a compelling journey into the cult and culture behind the obituary page and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.

In Remember Me, Time writer Lisa Takeuchi Cullen has created a humorous and poignant chronicle of her travels around the country to discover how Americans are reinventing the rites of dying. What she learned is that people no longer want to take death lying down; instead, they're taking their demise into their own hands and planning the afterparty.

Cullen hears stories of modern-day funerals: lobster-shaped caskets and other unconventional containers for corpses; cremated remains turned into diamonds; and even mishaps like dove releases gone horribly wrong....

It's easy to feel like we're alone in our struggles, but when we're able to share our stories with other women, we realize how alike we really are. There is comfort in numbers and knowing that we're not alone.
-- Patricia

As women, we take care of everyone else before ourselves. Now is the time to put your needs at the top of your to-do list, because if not now, when?
-- Annie

We realized we're not perfect, and we're pretty sure we're not alone. Besides, beauty -- and being a "bombshell" -- is more about being courageous than curvaceous.
--...

On the evening of April 15, 1848, nearly eighty enslaved Americans attempted one of history's most audacious escapes. Setting sail from Washington, D.C., on a schooner named the Pearl, the fugitives began a daring 225-mile journey to freedom in the North--and put in motion a furiously fought battle over slavery in America that would consume Congress, the streets of the capital, and the White House itself.

Mary Kay Ricks's unforgettable chronicle brings to life the Underground Railroad's largest escape attempt, the seemingly immutable politics of slavery, and the individuals...

To die, kick the bucket, to meet your Maker, dead as a doornail, get whacked, smoked, bite the dust, sleep with the fishes, go six feet under--whatever death is called, it's going to happen. In 1789 Ben Franklin wrote, "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." Death remains a certainty. But how do we die? It's the enormous variety of how that enlivens final exits.

According to death certificates, in 1700 there were less than 100 causes of death. Today there are 3,000. With each advance of technology, people find new ways to become deceased, often causing trends that...

The answers to all the questions you've ever had about homosexuality but were afraid to ask are finally in one book, Is It a Choice?

In this newly revised and updated edition, Eric Marcus provides insightful, no-nonsense answers to hundreds of the most commonly asked questions about homosexuality. Offering frank insight on everything you've always wanted-and needed-to know about same-gender relationships, coming out, family roles, politics, and much more, including:

How do you know if you're gay or lesbian?
What should you do if your child is gay or lesbian?...

From the author of the internationally bestselling Kosher Sex. A wake-up call about the growing trend of misogyny in our culture-as evidenced by the flood of reality TV shows, ads, and lyrics that portray women as brainless bimbos, or worse

Shmuley Boteach, the social commentator and outspoken relationship guru, shares his grave concerns about our society's growing contempt for women. Turn on the television: Reality TV shows such as The Bachelor, For Love or Money, and Average Joe boost their ratings by showing attractive women in competition for one man, one man's money,...

In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Catherine Crier, a former judge and one of television's most popular legal analysts, offers a riveting and authoritative account of one of the most memorable crime dramas of our time: the murder of Laci Peterson at the hands of her husband, Scott, on Christmas Eve 2002. Drawing on extensive interviews with key witnesses and lead investigators, as well as secret evidence files that never made it to trial, Crier traces Scott's bizarre behavior; shares dozens of transcripts of Scott's chilling and incriminating phone conversations; offers...