This best-selling text offers an overview of how the various social sciences perceive the world around us, emphasizing social change and how it impacts society.

Contemporary Society, Tenth Edition, uses a journalistic writing style, but does not skimp on scholarly data and references. The authors reinforce the idea that the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial order is fraught with difficulties, as was the transition from an agricultural to an industrial order. This framework also illustrates the increasing fragmentation of the social order, which leads people away from community and a common purpose to conflict and dissension.