Taxation Law Books

Unlike the previous reviewer, I agree with the review entitled "A Disappointing Read". As I read the history of antitrust in the US, I am struck by how aware the lawmakers of the late 19th-century were of the fact that the alleged monopolists (such as Standard Oil) caused prices to fall and output to rise.

In this book, the author seems totally unaware of this fact. I found this book to be frustratingly bad, poorly argued and too often based upon myths about American economic history.

I am a professor of antitrust law, and I read this book and liked it. I would recommend it primarily to lawyers and historians interested in serious reading about the history of the American polity's attitudes toward and relationship with industry and the relative level of industrial concentration. Bear in mind that Peritz is a _very_ big-picture sort of guy, and a problem with the book is that he perhaps has taken on too ambitious a project. In the legal academy these days everybody seems to be trying very hard to show that they are discovering the deepest, most abstract theoretical explanations of legal phenomena, and the resulting problem is that sometimes they claim to have found explanations that just seem too neat and convenient to possibly be true. I felt this to some extent in reading Peritz's book; you may share my feeling that there is something a little too perfect in his claim to have discovered the opposing "property logic" and "equality logic" that are the fundamental forces governing all competition policy. Also, as noted in a previous review ("Best in its field"), the book is palpably left-leaning, though Peritz himself never seems openly to advocate a particular position.

A separate issue is that, as some of the prior reviews demonstrate, this book is apparently not well suited for economists. They seem to look for particular things in legal histories (note that at least one of the reviewers mistakenly characterized this book as an "economic history") and, when they don't find them, they claim that the history is a failure. Two reviewers ("Disappointing Read" and "Inaccurate") have now argued that there is something wrong with Peritz's book because he fails to observe empirical data and theoretical research allegedly showing that the monopolists of the late 19th c.--the time when the U.S. adopted its first federal antitrust law--in fact promoted healthy markets because they "caused prices to fall and output to rise." The implicit argument that flows from this is a little mysterious--the reviewers seem to argue either that Peritz is wrong because antitrust is wrong (i.e., that the monopolists were good and therefore Congress should not have adopted antitrust), or that in fact the Congress of 1890 did not have the monopolists in mind when they enacted the Sherman Act because they recognized, as some conservative economists now argue, that the monopolists were socially beneficial.

Neither argument follows at all; the criticism is off base at least for the following three reasons:

1. To the extent that the criticism faults Peritz for his failure to show that antitrust is in fact good policy--that is, for his failure to offer a substantive response to the alleged empirical proof of the social beneficence of the monopolists--it misunderstands Peritz's project. Again, he sets a very big-picture task for himself, but no part of it is a substantive defense of either the antitrust laws nor any particular vision of competition policy. He merely wants to examine the "history, rhetoric [and] law" that surrounds the idea of "competition" in U.S. history (note that both of the prior negative reviews assume that this book is about "antitrust history," but neither in the title nor in Pertiz's statement of his purpose does he say that this is a book about "antitrust history"--rather, it is a history of "competition policy"). He *never* sets for himself the task of arguing that the monopolists were bad as a matter of economic substance nor that antitrust is good as a matter of substantive policy.

2. To the extent that the previous reviews quibble with Peritz's view of the historical origin of U.S. antitrust law, they are wrong. As was shown beyond serious doubt in a classic legislative history of antitrust (John D. Clark, "The Federal Trust Policy" (1936)), the Congress that passed the Sherman Act and the later Congress that passed the significant 1914 amendments to that Act utterly and apparently intentionally ignored the prevailing academic economists of their day. Therefore, though some academics at that time argued that markets are sufficiently self-regulating that even the Rockefellers and J.P. Morgans and so on should just be left alone, Congress didn't care. (And, moreover, that was _not_ a universally held economic view, nor is it today, by any stretch of the imagination.) So how is any purported empirical proof of the efficiency of the mega-monopolies relevant at all to a legislative history of antitrust? Congress didn't care about it.

3. But most importantly, the final reason that I think the previous reviews are off base is that they simply reflect a political bias that nowadays is very common amongst economists and conservative lawyers, and accordingly they reflect (though only implicitly) the basic ugliness of conservative microeconomics. Both reviews imply a basic tenet of all right-wing economics: that where markets are "self-regulating," according to the pinched and narrow definition that conservatives give that term--namely, when particular companies cause "prices to fall and output to rise"--they must be left alone. Believing in such a view depends on one's willingness to believe that the only social values that matter are endogenous to the simplistic model of perfect competition. But that requires several large empirical leaps of faith, because it requires one to believe that the simplistic model of competitive equilibrium that is the heart of neoclassical economics is in fact sufficiently similar to the real world that it is the answer to all policy questions. In fact, as was observed in a previous review ("Best In Its Field), the simplistic model, however useful it may be in the classroom and in textbooks, ignores profound matters of policy and conscience that are not endogenous--that is, values that are not internalized by market participants and therefore can only be served by policy makers.

Failure to understand this problem explains how men like Ricardo, for example, could look across the human wasteland of poverty, disease and suffering that was the British Industrial Revolution and say that, hey, it's okay, because markets are efficient and since the markets have produced this human tragedy, then it must be the best we can do.

Histories of antitrust are not new, but this has got to be one of the most thorough and carefully considered so far. That probably explains why, even though Peritz is a law professor, it has been so well received amongst historians. Peritz takes an important step beyond most of the current debate about antitrust, recognizing that federal "competition" policy is about more than just one statute. Rather, our nation's perspective on the structure of industry and the relation of industry to government is an all-encompassing political phenomenon, with constitutional and philosophical overtones as broad as any issue concerning the structure of government.

One word of warning is that the book is ideologically tilted. Peritz is associated to some degree with a left-leaning movement in legal scholarship called "critical legal studies," and a primary purpose of this book is to combat what Peritz considers the revisionist history or historical ignorance underlying the conservative economic revolution in antitrust since the 1970s. That said, however, his readable and informed book is a work of genuine and serious scholarship and not at all a simple political broadside. It is a welcome dose of perspective in a debate that recently has grown narrow and unduly obsessed with theoretical abstraction.

A brief word about the prior, very negative review (entitled "Disappointing Read"): it is beyond me why the assertedly "large (and still growing) body of research" which purportedly "show[s] that [the 19th c. monopolies] in fact promoted competitive markets" has anything to do with the "mythical notion" that "antitrust legislation was enacted in response to increasing monopolization of the U.S. economy." In fact, whatever economists may have come up with during the late 20th c.--the "large (and still growing)" body of research--is itself irrelevant to the motivations of the policymakers who first created the antitrust laws.

Moreover, though it is true that certain writers in recent decades have begun to argue that the megacompanies of the late 19th c. in fact were good for the economy, and that the so-called "muckrakers" and other populist critics of the early monopolists had gotten it all wrong, that is not to say that that research is right and Peritz is wrong. In fact, this allegedly "large (and still growing)" body of research is itself controversial and, so some would argue, politically biased. It is at a minimum at odds with nearly a century of widely held belief and therefore to be received with caution. Moreover, it seems contrary to mountains of anecdotal evidence of intentional and serious wrongdoing, like brutality towards labor and willful disregard of basic quality and safety, that when committed by a monopolist represent a genuine threat to our polity and a legitimate concern of our government. Whether or not the vaunted synergistic efficiencies that purportedly flow from industry consolidation outweigh the evils of monopoly is not at all a settled matter (which evils, contrary to the glib implication in the prior review, cannot necessarily be measured by endogenous market phenomena, but may very well produce externalities like massive distributional inequalities, distortion in capital markets, undue political influence in private hands, environmental harms, etc.).

Anyway, it may or may not be a "mythical notion" that monopolies are bad, but whether it is "mythical" or not, the evidence suggesting it was not available to the 1890 Congress that enacted the Sherman Act and it is therefore irrelevant to a history of their motivations.

Professor Peritz reports lots of detailed facts about the legislative debates and courtroom proceedings surrounding America's antitrust regulations. Unfortunately, he far too uncritically accepts the mythical notion that antitrust legislation was enacted in response to increasing monopolization of the U.S. economy. Peritz ignores the large (and still growing) body of research showing that Standard Oil, the Chicago meatpackers, U.S. Steel, and other firms vilified in popular histories in fact promoted competitive markets -- these firms dramatically reduced prices, improved their operating and distribution efficiencies, and consistently increased the quality of the goods they offered to consumers. With his incorrect understanding of economic history, Peritz's explanations of the origins and role of antitrust legislation and case law are, largely, unfounded.

"Curb Rights" tries to answer the problem of subsidized transit, but offers too much economic modeling, which would not necessarily work.

The book is founded on the theory of bus and jitney operators having rights to own the curb for bus stops. This brings about too much free market optimism, but very little assurance that public transit would actually be improved.

It's no surprise that free market public transit is advocated, one of the authors is from the Libertarian Party think tank, the Reason Foundation.

The authors also mention that in places where transit was deregulated, there was no survey on how riders actually felt about service before and after deregulation. So there is no guarantee about improvement.

The authors suggest a hybrid system of urban mass-transit consisting of both privately-owned, flexibly-scheduled & routed and public-owned, fixed scheduled & routed bus systems. In order to prevent the flexibly-scheduled system from parasitically skimming passengers from the fixed route system, the authors suggest the promotion of "curb rights" to separate the operations.

This would allow the predictably high-volume routes to be served by the high-volume, large bus & cost overhead municipal operation while allowing the service increases possible through the addition of smaller and possibly innovative operators.

Makes sense to me. While clearly advocating their position, the authors recognize and address the ligitimancy of the municipalities' concerns over service preservation. With sensible implentation, I'm sure it would work to improve urban transit which (it seems to me) currently consists of balancing the interest of car-driving taxpayers to limit transit subsidies and the interests of Municipal Transit Agency employee unions to maximize employee wages and benefits, with the transit customer well down on the list of concerns.

I wouldn't spend any money on this book. The theory espoused in this book is so far from reality, it isn't funny.

This book promotes the notion that "free enterprise" must be inserted into public transit so as to maximize the benefits to passengers and society at large.

However, this notion is demonstrably wrong.

For example, local bus operations in British cities outside of London were completely de-regulated in the 1980's by the national Tory government, e.g., public funding was almost entirely cut off and private bus companies were allowed to compete freely against one another (as opposed to "privatization" in the U.S. which has mainly meant a public agency putting service out to competitive bid). Regional pass schemes allowing passengers to freely transfer from one route or operator to another were abolished.

The results are conclusive. Bus patronage in British cities dropped more than 30% by the early 1990's. In London, bus patronage over the same period actually increased somewhat, despite major cuts in subsidy funding. The difference was that London retained regional governmental control of fare and service decisions, despite putting much of the service out to bid.

The disaster of British local bus de-regulation has also been repeated in spades by the ill-considered "privatization" of British Rail. Rail privatization has been a big enough disaster to become one of the hottest public issues in Great Britain.

The successes obtained by "centralized" regional planning and decision-making authority in elected government hands is quite conclusive in other countries. In Zurich, per capita transit usage is among the highest in the developed world, exceeding a number of Japanese cities. Zurich's success--in one of the most affluent, high auto-owning urban areas on the planet--is based on centralized planning at the canton level, plus generous government funding. Zurich has managed to retain very high transit market share despite rapid motorization since the 1960's. The reasons that Toronto, Canada's past success with generating high transit usage levels, are essentially the same as Zurich, though the current pseudo-free market provincial government in Ontario is too boorish to understand this.

"Free market" economists like Klein often cite the "success" of private transit in Southeast Asia; however, those "capitalist" bastions of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia have relied on centralized planning and sufficient funding to allow new transit systems to function through selective privatization, but not anywhere near the model that Klein espouses. In effect, government transportation policies in Hong Kong and Singapore guarantee the transit market (e.g., car use is restricted, heavily taxed). The Zurich and Toronto models have proven to be less authoritarian.

Klein proves how blinkered economists--particularly those who espouse "libertarian" views ("new right" in British and Australian terms)--are very shortsighted about public transit and other similar public policy issues.

For one of the few books that I've seen that "gets it right," I recommend "A Very Public Solution" by Paul Mees, a professor of Planning and Public Policy at Melbourne University, Melboune, Australia (yes, Amazon carries it).

Mee's point about urban transit is best summed up by this from one of my unpublished papers:

Flexibility would be the greatest benefit of improved transit to "transit dependents" and would-be "choice" users. This is clearly explained by the book "A Very Public Solution" (Page 289; Dr. Paul Mees, Melbourne University Press, 2000. Melbourne, Australia):

(Mees' excerpt):

With public transport itself, the critical issue is flexibility. And the key to flexibility for passengers is simplicity and predictability, not a bewildering array of constantly changing options. The latter produces confusion, not convenience. Paradoxically, to be flexible, public transport must also be rigidly predictable: perhaps the best analogy is with the road system, rather than with cars themselves...

This means that frequent service on an easy-to-understand, predictable, and reliable network of regional and local transit services delivers vastly superior flexibility to the customer. Such transit systems typically service a far higher percentage of "choice" patronage. Compared to an infrequent, specialized, hard to understand jumble of routes, such transit networks compete successfully with automobiles.

A Very Public Solution's prime case study is Toronto, Canada. Toronto has significantly higher per transit usage per capita than many European cities, an order of magnitude higher than most U.S. urban areas. Toronto's exceptionally high transit use occurs despite millions of residents living in dispersed suburbs essentially indistinguishable from the American norm. Canadian fuel prices are only slightly higher than the United States. There are more similarities than differences between Canadian and U.S. culture. Toronto's transit usage remain high, despite service cuts caused by an early 1990's recession.

There would be no need to take a "survey on how customers felt before and after deregulation." The "survey" would be expressed by customers voluntarily using the service, i.e. whether they were willing to purchase rides on deregulated transit vehicles. If customers were satisfied, the transit company would prosper. If not, they would go out of business and another company could enter the market and provide satisfactory service. That is the only survey that counts! If that's too much Econ 101 speculation, then you just don't get it!

HOW TO START YOUR OWN (SUBCHAPTER)S CORPORATION initially deceives the reader into thinking it will be easy to understand, because of the author's folksy style and use of plain language. However, the information in the book is not organized helpfully, nor is it complete. For example, there is one mention of Social Security Tax in the index; upon looking at the correct page for this mention, I found an only an irreverent reference to the possibility that FICA taxes may not be returned to taxpayers in Social Security payments. In the "Summary and Examples" section of Chapter 3, the author states, "...again, the IRS and the Social Security Administration won't like that procedure..." (i.e., taking all S corporation profits as dividend distributions) but I was unable to find where the author had discussed this at all (why say, "again,"?)

Furthermore, an updated edition would be welcome inasmuch as there have been several changes to S Corporation regulations, the most notable being in 1996 when the limit on number of stockholders was changed from 35 to 75, a substantial increase indeed.

I was very disappointed with this book. Its cover gives the impression, with bullets, that you will be able to learn several things from the author. For example 1) Using an S Corp for a personal tax shelter. 2) Completely avoid paying any income tax. I bought this book thinking that I would be taken through a step by step process on how to accomplish at least those items highlighted on the books cover. But instead, I was taken through a lot of general information without really being tought how to "do" anything. I believe that the author is knowledgeable, however this book was sold as a "how to" book. It feel way short of that mark.

Great breakdown of the tax options available to small businesses in terms of S corporations, partnerships, LLC's, etc. Everything you need to know to start an S corporation.

I own and operate my own S-Corporation, and I found this book to be chockful of invaluable information and advice for setting it up and running it. I strongly recommend the book.

The WAY your income is stolen from you is not the main issue. It is the fact that it's stolen at all.

This country was not founded on the principle of "pay up or you're going to jail".

But that is what taxes are.

If you think they are inevitable and that it's impossible to have society without them, you have a LOT of reading to do.

You could start with "Your Money or Your Life", by Sheldon Richman. From there, amazon should direct you to other titles of interest with their helpful book suggestions.

You could also check out Amazon Top-100 reviewer John "Scott" Ryan. He has some reading lists that can point you in a very good direction.

I disagree with this book. As a former Washington DC bureaucrat, I happen to know there are two sides to every story, depending on who you ask. This book only presents one side.

One wonders why it took years of punitive taxes for policy wonks to arrive at this brilliant masterpiece. But as they say, better late than never. This little book provides an overview of the rationale behind the flat tax idea. It is the best solution I have seen to the monstrosity better know as the tax code. The flat tax is a credible and workable means for delivering the taxpayer from the current corrupt and complex tax laws. I recommend this book to every taxpayers that is tired of sacrificing more and more of their own hard-earned money to Uncle Sam and want to see sensibility and fairness restored to the system of taxation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt originally founded the Internal Revenue Service on a temporary basis, simply to collect taxes during World War II. Unfortunately, over the past 40 years, the IRS has crept into the daily lives of all Americans, and has adopted the system of "guilty until proven innocent." This book, like so many others, documents with extreme accuracy the horrors inflicted onto innocent Americans by the absolute tyranny of the IRS. More than that, however, The IRS v. the People offers a simple solution to the status quo: a flat tax and/or a national sales tax. It seems simple enough, however there are too many in Congress who refuse to let such a fair and balanced tax system take over the IRS. Many feel the abuse of the current income tax is well justified and gives it to the wealthy and successful of this country. What they fail to recognize is that the income tax hurts all Americans. A flat tax would be fair and balanced, with a fixed percentage for all income to be taxed (17%). A national sales tax would offer the same relief. A national sales tax would silence the left who claim it would greatly favor the wealthy because those who buy yachts, boats, antiques, luxury cars, and townhomes in the Riviera are the wealthy! Either way you like at it, from the left or the right, a new tax system is needed to truly reflect the principles on which this great nation was established upon: liberty and equality.

I am currently taking Securities Law and we are using this book. It is highly dense, and the authors are poor writers. They clearly know the material and understand the distinctions, but I am often frustrated that they simply do not make their points more clearly. My advice is simple: if you are required to use this text, get it, but also use the Examples & Explanations book by Alan R. Palmiter because the prose is much easier to understand. I cannot speak for the other study aids, but they may work too. The key is getting one to complement this book. I think the E & E is a good choice because securities law is easier to learn by tackling problems and the E & E book has problems and answers (the casebook has problems too, but no answers -- you get those from the prof). Good luck!

i find this casebook to be very disorganized, unclear, and repetitive. there has to be a better sec reg casebook out there somewhere.

Okay, so this isn't pleasure reading...And I only bought it because it was assigned.
Still, I'm working in the securities area this summer and I don't know what I'd do without it. Hornbooks are great and I highly recommend them. But sometimes they don't really delve into the fine points of the law. This book is all about the fine points. I'll admit it's dense, but securities law isn't the simplest of topics. The other textbooks I've seen don't have as many cases and they seem to gloss over important topics like materiality which isn't that terrible until you need to know whether a particular activity is material.

Does the book cover a lot of ground? Yes. Is it a challenging read? Yes. Is there a better Sec. Reg. text out there? I haven't seen one.

This is a very unclear book with horrible, dense prose. The authors seem to have an impressive grasp of securities law, and fill the notes with many meaningful substantive explications of various technical points, but they are basically just awful writers, which makes this text a serious chore to read. Of course, no one is going to buy it unless it is assigned in a law school class, so its lack of clarity unfortunately won't really induce "customers" to buy a different securities text, but it is worth noting that you will probably need to go ahead and buy a very good hornbook right from the start. In your class, I'd suggest you read this text as little as possible: it will make your head hurt, and it's far too dense to teach you securities regulation effectively.

This is a picture friendly small handbook that puts a happy face ont taxes. Its a small history book that feels like a TAXES FOR DUMMY book. Its a little too happy really for a subject that is not the most upbeat.

This book was the right price and the right pace for a young person begining his or her life on their own. The Wall Street guide is comprehensive covering a quick history of taxes and then expounding upon the present state of US tax codes and the IRS. This book won't help you fill out your taxes nor contain the most up todate codes but may help make the frustration and confusion associated with filing much lest daunting and more bearable

Tax laws have changed dramatically since 1995. A lot of the information in this book is irrelevant now. Does not include infomation on newer tax credits.

WSJ must introduce a new and updated edition.

First, this is NOT a tax manual. This small and colorful book is designed as a general introduction to the process and vocabulary of the various taxes we all pay under varying conditions of income and investment. It is not a current guide to assist you in tax planning.

It gives you a basic introduction to the kinds of taxes we pay at the federal and local levels, the IRS, "paying as you earn", the annual (federal) return (with a nice general overview of the general applicable forms), audits (shiver!), and a little overview of tax planning. But, again, this guide's purpose is to provide a general overview and to provide you with basic concepts and vocabulary. Think of this as a good introduction to the topic rather than a practical preparation guide and you will understand what this book is trying to do.

It has lots of color and every page also uses helpful illustrations of the forms and processes involved in the tax process. Great for young people trying to learn what they are facing as the goverment(s) remove large chunks of their income to keep us in whatever it is we think we have from the government(s).

Poetry is an art form that succeeds only if the reader can share with the poet a vision communicated by the poem. How this work won a pulitzer prize escapes me. The only way for an "outsider" the read this book is with an interpreter and a dictionary so the obscure, at least from my point of view, references can be appreciated. As a reader I get no sense of the images the writer wants to conjure and the poems fail to take me anywhere but to the cliff of reason where I am just left without a bridge for crossing. I do not wonder I was able to purchase this book for such a low price.

Here's a Muldoon pastiche:

Basement

Then to spy
in an unused cellar spot

Under a bulb fixture
long since jury-rigged
in deal cast-off

And between oil tank
and salt-scalloped stone wall

--Between a ruck
and a carapace--

A tiny skeleton--mouse.

My instinct:
to trip-tipsy the dark

--As even the Dean
and Cuchulain might--

fantastic.

[My opinion is that Muldoon peaked in 1990 with his tour de force, MADOC--A Mystery, the book-length poem and astounding work of the imagination. MADOC was large, confounding, mysterious, lyrical, and sui generis (really). Yet many readers/reviewers did not appreciate it. Since that work, Muldoon seemingly has tried to obtain such appreciation by offering more manageable fare--featuring topical themes, easy wit, sentiment, form, and rhyme (not to mention all those pretty names of Irish places). He has served up plates of warm apercus. If that is your thing--fine. He is terribly accomplished--his more recent poems, including those of Moy Sand and Gravel, sparkle with polish and panache. But I will take the polar edge of the creative MADOC thankyouverymuch.]

My rating does not mean this is average poetic work, only that by comparison to his last three collections, it less frequently reaches their daunting and rarified heights. It's actually a better place to start reading the "later" Muldoon, in fact. Domesticity has tamed a bit of the bravura evident in the arcane lore dazzling the other collections perhaps too much. Poems here like "Unapproved Road," mixing Taureg with IRA in its 1950s failed "border campaign," wittily contrast in a way that Muldoon warms to more and more as his work confronts his own hyphenating midlife identity into an American as much as an Irish poet. "Guns & Butter," "Whitethorns," "A Brief Course on Decommissioning" address the post-1998 events in the North of Ireland intelligently and without pandering. His children and wife now enter his work to round it out more vividly, and at least some of the shorter poems here continue the clarity sought in "Hay"'s briefer verses.

The reason this collection loses a star is the last poem, as usual in his work a longer one: "At the Sign of the Black Horse." The Irish navvy-Jewish mogul undercurrent never convinces, but seems layered over the parental concerns. Where Muldoon often swerves to avoid obstacles, here he seems to plow ahead, but ends up floundering a bit when taking more time to expand and concentrate his direction would've made for a better poetic quest into a very deserving subject of culture clash.

Don't buy anything from Lawgame. I purchased a lawschool book from them and they claimed to have sent but, conveniently, couldn't provide me with ANY sort of tracking data. The employee at Lawgame that I was corresponding with in an attempt to rectify this problem was also very short and impolite to me when I requested this information. Find somewhere else to buy your books.

The Crunch Time series is great for the Law School Exams-- the "cheater" charts are especially helpful. I'm glad that I held on to the
Crim Pro and Evidence books. In my work as a JAG attorney, I have found that they are perfect memory joggers to help with my part-time prosecution duties.

It is a very thorough commercial outline. However, there are many details that are being left out. In brief, it is not a perfect substitute for actual textbooks.

This book was basically mildly mediocre. Maybe it's because I already know something about the antitrust laws, but I didn't feel that this book actually told me anything new. I feel that perhaps in their effort to make the antitrust laws "readable" by a layman they have made the material useless. You could probably find just as useful an introduction to antitrust laws online someplace for free.

As a non-lawyer and a non-expert in antitrust, I found this to be a very useful introduction and reference. It takes a fairly dispassionate view of antitrust, yet gives the reader some insight into some of the controversies and unresolved issues in the field. The writing is clear and often lively. The authors use examples well to illustrate their point, but don't go into excessive detail. It doesn't just cover the laws, but it covers the procedures and some of the key doctrines that have developed over the years. A student of antitrust will probably want a much more comprehensive book, but for someone just getting in to the topic this is an excellent, inexpensive and short introduction. It probably took me about three or four hours to read the whole book.

This book is so easy to read and everything is organized the same way in each chapter, making note-taking a breeze. Each chapter ends with quizzes and the answers are in the back to check. Also, the website offers an additional quiz in terminology and multiple choice. To prepare for my exams, I simply studied the quizzes at the end of each chapter as well as online and I got an A on every test. I learned a lot about the different sociological viewpoints of each subject studied in each chapter. This textbook is great for students.

I just wish there was a way to get reviews on textbooks. I previewed several books ultimately deciding on this text. Do yourself a favor if you are a teacher and don't touch this book. The information is presented in the most dull way and further everything is DATED. I have never become so frustrated with a text that discusses current race relations with data from the 1980's. If you are considering this text, just glance at some of the data and you will get my point.