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Best for those already familiar with Levinas' work.
Proper Names is a fascinating collection of essays previously available only in French. The pieces range from discussions of ethical, philosophical and theological questions in the work of Buber, Max Picard, Proust, Derrida and, especially, Maurice Blanchot. These works will be of interest to anyone who is already familiar with the extraordinary work of Emmanuel Levinas, who is, in my mind, one of the most important and original thinkers of the 20th century. The texts allow one to watch Levinas engaged in acts of response/responsibility to and for the Other within the framework of his own ethical system. It is my experience that, if one is concerned with the possibility of ethics after Hegel or, more precisely, Heidegger, everything that Levinas wrote is worth reading. However, if one is not already acquainted with this writer, one should start elsewhere. Infinity and Totality is the best starting point, but The Levinas Reader and Otherwise than Being (the more difficult of these three works) are better starting points. ... Read more

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Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber -- considered by many the most important Jewish philosophers since the 12th century sage Maimonides -- knew each other as associates and friends. Yet although their dialogue was instructive at times, and demonstrated the esteem in which Levinas held Buber, in particular, their relationship just as often exhibited a failure to communicate. This volume of essays is intended to resume the important dialogue between the two. Thirteen essays by a wide range of scholars do not attempt to assimilate the two philosopher's respective views to each other. Rather, these discussions provide an occasion to examine their genuine differences -- difference that both Levinas and Buber agreed were required for genuine dialogue to begin. ... Read more

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Long Overdue
A volume such as this is long overdue and welcome to those of us who feel near to Buber and Levinas. In the introduction, the editors announce the intent of the volume as "not to assimilate their respective views to each other, but to point out their differences - differences that both Levinas and Buber agreed were required to begin." (2) While the question of rapprochement is always in the not too distant background, this work eminently achieves its intentions, even in those essays that modestly gesture toward rapprochement.

As I read, I was struck by the pathos, the energy produced in drawing Levinas and Buber into proximity. In each essay, one feels the preference of each contributor, a nearness beyond intellectual specificity, a proximity that resembles filial obligation. Levinas and Buber inspire commitment in us. The import of their excurses reach through yet beyond formal questions to the vitality of flesh and breath. In reading I found myself drawn into this drama. Thus, my own filiality might be manifest in this review.

The book is organized into four parts. Part one, "Dialogue," presents a short essay by Buber entitled, "Samuel and Agag," and an essay by Levinas, "On Buber," responding to it. These selections are well made in that the "little disagreement" they illustrate is enceinte, in all the multivalence of the term, signaling the divergent trajectories each take in their respective accounts of inter-subjectivity.
Part two, "Ethics," queries the differences and similarities in Levinas's and Buber's ethical thinking. Stephan Strasser's "Buber and Levinas: Philosophical Reflections on an Opposition" delicately traces the philosophical tensions that emerge in their proximity. As he critically presents both thinkers, he allows the oppositions to meet without, admirably, seeking to resolve them. Robert Bernasconi, in "`Failure of Communication' as Surplus: Dialogue and Lack of Dialogue between Buber and Levinas," brings Levinas and Buber into a contact that allows their respective insights to operate without utterly assimilating one to the other. I recognized, however, that this contact has a quintessentially Levinasian flavor. In my view, Bernasconi models the most viable strategy for a rapprochement between them. Andrew Tallon's essay, "Affection and the Transcendental Dialogical Personalism of Buber and Levinas," seeks to invite Levinas into Tallon's own Buberesque project. This essay is especially intriguing to those of us interested in pre-deconstructive phenomenological analysis and the situatedness of these thinkers with respect to tradition. Neve Gordon in "Ethics and the Place of the Other," and Maurice Friedman in "Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas: An Ethical Query," are refreshing in their forthright criticisms of Levinas. Gordon convincingly suggests that Levinas's ethical inter-subjectivity cannot be teased out of, or integrated within, the I-Thou without damaging Buber's central theses.
Part three, "Religion," discusses Buber's and Levinas's embeddness in the Jewish tradition and their different locations within this locale. These essays are especially interesting. The authors seem more comfortable with the tensions produced in the dialogue. They imply, it seems to me, that the tautness between communion and concern for justice, evolution and tradition, consolation and responsibility, reciprocity and height, may be necessary for religion to authentically operate. The tension is none other than that space familiar to us, that space where the pastoral and prophetic meet (or perhaps we might say the dialogical and the ethical). Ephraim Meir, in "Buber's and Levinas's Attitudes toward Judaism" masterfully presents these differences, such that I was touched by the vitality. He is valiantly even-handed though he hints at a Levinasian leaning. Michael Fagenblat and Nathan Wolski, in "Revelation Here and Beyond: Buber and Levinas on the Bible," tackle the problematic of revelation in Levinas and Buber. Robert Gibbs's "Reading Torah: The Discontinuity of Tradition," presents Buber's and Levinas's respective approaches to the reading of the Torah with special attention to the (non) mediation of tradition. Tamra Wright, in "Beyond The `Eclipse of God': The Shoah in the Jewish though of Buber and Levinas," compares their different trajectories in the wake of the Holocaust. The one exception to the aforementioned comfort is Andrew Kelley's essay, "Reciprocity and the Height of God: A Defense of Buber against Levinas." Kelly's "defense" is unconvincing as I will show below.
In Part four, "Heidegger, Humanism, and the Other Animal," the culminating essays draw Levinas and Buber into current debates on these issues. Richard Cohen's important essay, "Buber and Levinas - and Heidegger," traces Buber's and Levinas's respective relation to Heideggerian ontology. Cohen successfully discloses how this relation structures their own meeting. Matthew Calarco, in "The Retrieval of Humanism in Buber and Levinas," convincingly argues that Levinas, passing through yet beyond Buber, provides a pregnant site from which to address the contemporary problematic of humanism. Peter Atterton's essay, "Face-to-Face with the Other Animal," is an interesting attempt to extend Levinas's thought beyond its explicit specifications, integrating Buber's concern for a non-human I-Thou relation. Passionately argued in the best sense, Atterton highlights an ambiguity in the application of Levinas's thought. Though he raises some complex questions, unfortunately, he may only be convincing to those who share his sentiments. Atterton confronts Levinas's (alleged) anthropocentrism with his own, implicit, anthropocentrism (or more precisely, anthropomorphisms).

The Promethean thread strung throughout this volume suggests that the questions of reciprocity and formalism posed to Buber by Levinas are the decisive points of contention. The essays that most decidedly side with Buber suggest that these criticisms are not well founded when giving Buber a close reading. Gordon, Friedman, and Kelley aim at answering Levinas's challenge on these grounds while critiquing his positions. Gordon (elsewhere) writes, "I believe that it is more becoming to begin reading Buber's ideas without assimilating him to Levinas" (119). While this may be so, it may be equally "becoming" to read Levinas in the same vein.For example, Friedman writes: "Levinas's...most insistent critiques of Buber's philosophy are tied up with his own assertion that the relation to the Other must be asymmetrical, and correspondingly, I must place the Other at a height above me..." (119). Kelley makes similar moves when he writes: "For Levinas, there is something about the other - the person opposite - that I cannot grasp" (227). These simple statements, meant to convey Levinas's position in relation to Buber, betray an ignorance of Levinas's point and the implications of his challenge. While it is true that the question of asymmetry and alterity are decisive, Friedman and Kelley seem to miss why they are decisive. In other words, the other is not placed at a height by the I, but is always already a height, and as such, the other person is never initially "the person opposite." I want to dwell on the why of these criticisms because I do not believe the above are mere `slips of the pen,' but expressions of a deep fissure irrupting between Buber and Levinas.
Cohen's essay explicitly draws out the why behind Levinas's criticisms of Buber, a why not adequately addressed by Gordon, Friedman or Kelley: what has priority, ontology or ethics? Cohen writes, "Buber's critique of Heidegger is not based on a critique of ontology as such, but rather on a different version of ontology" (241). This is Levinas's qualm with Buber and the reason he raises questions of reciprocity and height. As such, no amount of amendments or qualifications to Buber's ideas can ameliorate the tension; it resembles analytic opposition. The question is not: can ontology (in this case Buber's) have an ethics? The Levinasian question is more basic: is Being adequate to Goodness? For Levinas, the answer is no and if one answers in the affirmative one must philosophically and ethically account for the horrors of human history, one must become an apologist for Being. As our contemporary milieu demonstrates, nihilism and fanaticism seem preferable to such an apology, or perhaps, proceed from it.

Numerous statements throughout specific essays, as the examples above hint, miss this basic point. Tallon's essay attempts to extend Buber's insights while "...comparing and contrasting...by circling several times..." the challenge of Levinas (49). Tallon constructs epistemological categories in seeking to make Buber's ontology more rigorous. While he is successful at integrating some of Levinas's broad concerns in his dialogical perspective, his recourse to "co-constitution," "broadened intentionality," "intimate co-presence," and the construction of a "dialogical transcendental," would draw ethics back into ontology, rendering it derivative. Kelley writes elucidating the I-Thou: "I allow the other person to be who he or she is. It is in this way that speaking...does not destroy the height of the other" (230). And: "The word `Thou' merely indicates the initiative on the part of an I of turning toward and addressing that which confronts the I" (232). It is hard to see how the relation is not determined by the I's own comportment, that is, the I determines the relation in "allowing," in its "turning toward," the other to "be who he or she is." Being is still the underlining term. It seems to require sheer heroism to keep the "-" from subsuming the "I" and "Thou." The issue is not that we should not efface the other's height, but that we absolutely and utterly can not. The height of the other is inviolable, and this is precisely what traces the rupture of Being by ethics. Kelley, and Friedman quoted above, already presuppose reciprocity. Such a position already reduces the "ungraspable alterity" to a derivative status, (i.e. the other is different from me) setting the relation into an economy, the play of polarities, and so on. For Levinas, the other's height marks a (pre) originary alterity, an alterity before all presence and reciprocity. Before any question of economy or reciprocity can be raised, the command-the height of the other-elects the subject to an infinite responsibility. In ethics, the I is elected to an orientation before any choice of how and whether I comport myself in such and such a manner.
I do not wish to be uncharitable in these criticisms. Yet in order "not to assimilate their respective views to each other, but to point out their differences - differences that both Levinas and Buber agreed were required to begin," (2) the question of the priority of ethics to being must be addressed. If it were a question of assimilation, it seems to me that Levinas would fare far worse in that he essentially evaporates in Buber, as ethics always does when subordinate to an ontological relation. Buber fares better than Levinas, in that Levinas ruptures the process of assimilation as such. Buber's deep insights can operate in Levinas's orbit without being obliterated. It would be interesting and important to elaborate what Buberian intimacy would look like while taking Levinas's criticisms seriously, that is, while maintaining the primacy of ethics over ontology. For instance, what would "communion" mean when it no longer means diffusement in a totality? I'm not sure that Levinas's descriptions in his phenomenology of eros are exhaustive, or even, perhaps, adequate. For instance, what happens in an intimate and personal friendship taking the priority of ethics seriously?

As I intimated earlier, Gordon convincingly suggests that Levinas's ethical inter-subjectivity can not be teased out of, or integrated within, the I-Thou without damaging Buber's central theses. In that these theses assume an ontological basis he is absolutely correct. It must be stressed that the issue is not Buber's "nominal" use of the language of Being, but rather, that the very structure of inter-subjectivity he elaborates requires Being, and in such a way that can allow the I its hegemony. Bernasconi successfully argues that it is not the case that Levinas "fails" to give Buber a close reading. Given the basic opposition in their founding orientation, Levinas is as charitable as he can be in his evaluation of Buber. At the close of his fine essay, Bernasconi writes: "For our model of dialogue should also recognize the alterity of the other which shows itself in `the restlessness of the same disturbed by the other'...and in the failure to communicate" (97). To modify my opening comments, this exhilarating volume repeats previous communicative failures, in that the dialogue is yet to adequately address the question of priority between ethics and ontology. As things stand, the dialogue can not help but fail, unless Buber's concerns are elaborated on an ethical rather than ontological basis. So the failure of this book is precisely its success, in that the challenge is now more explicitly and directly presented. With Bernasconi and Cohen, we must admit Buber's ontological rather than ethical bias, that is, the very structure of Buber's intersubjectivity is at issue and no amount of qualifications really address Levinas's basic challenge. The task, it seems, is to set ourselves to articulate what the intimacy of the I-Thou would look like on an ethical rather than ontological basis.

A quick note on form: though the cover art leaves something to be desired, the publisher is to be commended for the attractive and reader friendly layout and font selection. The substantive index will be welcome to students and researchers. Taking into account the few critical exceptions noted, this volume is, I think, an eminent success. As I intimated earlier, reading Levinas and Buber in close proximity generates pathos. The essays in this book are sure to inform and inspire, even those that offer perspectives one rejects. This volume will no doubt set off some intense dialogue as we continue to engage these questions.
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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of Philosophy, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 3967 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Explores major marketing and advertising campaigns from 1999-2006. Entries profile recent print, radio, television, billboard and Internet campaigns. Each essay discusses the historical context of the campaign, the target market, the competition, marketing strategy, and the outcome. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Rich and strange
Brilliant, eccentric, flying recklessly in the face of the critical and philosophical trends of its time, PROXIMITY is an analysis of individuation and difference that has no equal in the history of philosophy. Libertson, never heard of before or since, saw In Levinas, Blanchot and Bataille a nocturnal "involvement" which led him to his own bold conclusions about alterity as a condition of possibility of all separation or individuation. But he did not put this in terms of space, of form or structure like the thinkers of his time. Rather, he put it in the terms of force, of violence. The Other weighs on the Same from within the Same, crushing, suffocating, sucking the breath out of the separate being and at the same time giving it breath, giving it life. Libertson managed to derive this bizarre thematics from the writings of the three thinkers, quoting them copiously to support his arguments. Contradiction after contradiction, paradox after paradox, are compressed as though by a vise as Libertson endlessly repeats that the separate being can have no identity, but has an intense unicity. And the Other, imponderable, unseizable, approaches from within the Self itself. "I cannot approach it. It approaches me, and as it approaches, it creates me."

He praises Gilles Deleuze, and pauses for a withering footnote about Jacques Derrida's reading of Levinas. He characterizes Derrida as a Heidegerrian intellectualist unequipped for the challenges of Levinas. Few writers of the time would have dared such a broadside.

Apparently Levinas and Blanchot were in close touch with Libertson during the writing of the book, and both were presented with copies of the Phaenomenologica hardcover. According to a brief note in Critique May 1985, Blanchot wrote to Libertson, "ce que vous dites répond si merveilleusement à ce qu'il faut penser qu'il faut encore douter que vous soyez compris." Libertson is a footnote in one of Levinas's articles. Beyond this he remains completely unknown, if he is still alive.

Two years ago this writer was in the house where Blanchot lived for many years in Le Mesnil St. Denis, sixty miles from Paris. In the living room where Blanchot used to work is a bookshelf with a small shrine to Blanchot, lovingly kept by his adopted daughter. On the shelf is a cheap snapshot of Blanchot as an old man, a compendium of essays called LIRE BLANCHOT and -- a copy of PROXIMITY.

Prior Knowledge Essential for Comprehension of this book
For over ten years I had been reading this book--attempting to grasp the vocabulary which is sometimes in French, (with no page of definitions) and sometimes in English.One's task is to first keep track of ideas presented in the first chapter, then with your deep and profound pre-knowledge of Levinas, Blanchot, and Bataille, you can try to ferret out what is the strange, echoing discussion all three of them had amongst and between their works.The premise is that they DID read each other and responded in their own works to each other, but only Libertson gained some intuition of what these correlations might be. An excellent effort, hard to understand, must love exotic French theory and Martinus Nijhoff books.European all the way. ... Read more

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Two of the most creative and compelling thinkers of the second half of the 20th century, Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas, first encountered each other in the 1920s and began a friendship that was to span over seven decades. Their subsequent exchange of ideas and shared concerns, as well as their significant differences and influence on one another, have profound implications for the work of each. This work represents the most sustained analysis to date of the intersections of structure and content in Blanchot and Levinas's most representative and complex works ... Read more

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Cogent, intelligent study
Professor Toumayan has an excellent understanding of the radical heteronomy which conditions the "latent birth" of the separate being or entity. He also has a profound understanding of the contaminated temporality which must accompany such a process. "In order to write," he quotes Maurice Blanchot, "one must already have written." Finally, and most impressively, Professor Toumayan understands the complete absence of power, initiative, accomplishment in this universe of differentiation. I have never seen a scholar more comfortable with these concepts. Toumayan articulates them effortlessly, as though he was fed them with his mother's milk.

I think he is quite right to invoke Hegel and Heidegger, who were key influences on both Blanchot and Levinas. All the European philosophers of the time felt they had to take a position toward the Germans.

For myself, I don't think the lengthy lucubrations about death and the cadaver are helpful. This also was a fad of the time. Death won't enter the discourse. It's better to leave it alone.

Meanwhile, Toumayan makes certain semantic errors which invite misunderstanding. For instance, he speaks of the "work" when he means "oeuvre" in the Blanchotian sense. This is misleading. "Oeuvre" does not mean "work," in fact "oeuvre" means the opposite of "work". He also speaks of the "tale" when he should say "récit." A récit is not a tale, it is a process, an event, which shares the existence/non-existence, the problematic "insistence" of the oeuvre. Thirdly, most damagingly, he speaks of "relation" as the rapport between entities or subjects, thus allowing the deManians to slither in through the back door.He should have said something like "intrication." I think he does say "involvement," (a good etymological choice) sometimes. (I hope he isn't doing all this as a compromise with prevailing critical trends. That wouldn't be good, because prevailing critical trends are moronic.)

His abbreviations are not helpful, because some of them refer to French titles and others to English translations. It would have been better to give the whole title in parentheses.

I would like to excoriate him for drawing philosophical conclusions from literary images, which is strictly verboten for any serious thinker, but the fact is that Thomas l'obscur is so meditative in its very prose that his conclusions are more or less right. I do reproach him for giving us the lines from Thomas l'obscur in English, which prevents us from really seeing what he is getting at.

One of the smartest things he does -- or perhaps it's Blanchot and Levinas who give him his cue -- is to account for how the differential undercurrent which sabotages all forms of totalization, comprehension etc. also creates the objective world we know. If he didn't make this clear, the whole argument would sound like, in his words, "obscurantism," or as the French say, "parler pour ne rien dire."

In quoting Blanchot's explanation of how the image creates classical art, Toumayan is doing the right thing. The philosophy of difference is not a philosophy of nothingness or meaninglessness: it is a philosophy that respects the real world and wants to understand it.

For every il y a, every other night, there are instances in the real world that we all feel and experience every day. This is why a philosophy of difference is relevant. Indeed, urgently needed. The destruction and genocide we see around us are consequences of the blind faith in power, action, accomplishment, totalization, that have driven the human being to the brink of extinction.

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In this third printing of the life of Fr. Emmanuel d'Alzon, founder of the Augustinians of the Assumption, the author clearly and concisely chronicles his early years, career options, early priesthood, influential mentors, evolving religious vocation and subsequent apostolates in service to the Church. Inspired by the spirituality of St. Augustine, Fr. d'Alzon's passionate love of Christ, the Church and the Blessed Virgin Mary continue to motivate his sons and daughters to work for the transformation of society and the living out of their motto, "Thy Kingdom Come." ... Read more

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Since Plato's allegory of the cave, light and the role of sight have been accorded a unique position in Western thought. More recently, however, this status has come under significant criticism from continental and feminist thought.Throughout Textures of Light, the tension between vision and touch is carefully and clearly explored to present a challenging interpretation of how these often antagonistic concepts can be combined to develop a new theory of the visual within philosophy. ... Read more

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Provides a critique of reason, demanding that we take greater responsibility for nature and other people. ... Read more

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Radical Passivity examines the notion of passivity in the work of Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben, three thinkers of exceptional intellectual privacy whose writings have decidedly altered the literary and philosophical cultures of our era. Placing their use of passivity in the context of Heidegger and Kant, Wall argues that any philosophical understanding of Levinas's ethics, Blanchot's aesthetics, or Agamben's community must begin with an understanding of a "logic" of passivity that in fact originates (in the modern era at least) in Kant's analysis of the transcendental schema. ... Read more

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The physical and social sciences both split away from philosophy as an encompassing theory of human life. However, the 20th century development of phenomenology and its radical new perspective illuminates the human world and reinstates human experience in its place at the center of thinking about the world. Phenomenology, then, has just recently become an obvious candidate as a philosophical and theoretical lens through which the social sciences could begin seeing the world with a fresh (and arguably, more accurate) analysis. The readings in this volume are designed to illustrate from various viewpoints the relations between methods, domains, and goals of the two disciplines - sociology and phenomenology - and also to clear up some of the confusions that have dogged phenomenology. ... Read more

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Luckmann is the man
This is a great collection of writings that bridge the rather important connection between sociology and phenomenology, which has led to a great amount of important social theory in the past 100 years, like The Social Construction of Reality. Readable book too. ... Read more

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The rootless Jew, wandering disconnected from history, homeland, and nature, was often  the target of early twentieth-century nationalist rhetoric aimed against modern culture. But following World War II, a number of prominent French philosophers recast this maligned figure in positive terms, and in so doing transformed postwar conceptions of politics and identity.

Sarah Hammerschlag explores this figure of the Jew from its prewar usage to its resuscitation by Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida. Sartre and Levinas idealized the Jew’s rootlessness in order to rethink the foundations of political identity. Blanchot and Derrida, in turn, used the figure of the Jew to call into question the very nature of group identification. By chronicling this evolution in thinking, Hammerschlag ultimately reveals how the figural Jew can function as a critical mechanism that exposes the political dangers of mythic allegiance, whether couched in universalizing or particularizing terms.

Both an intellectual history and a philosophical argument, The Figural Jew will set the agenda for all further consideration of Jewish identity, modern Jewish thought, and continental philosophy.

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Social theorists dwell on the canonical works of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim but little on the theories of the major contemporary macro-theorists. This book fills this gap with a focus on the work of four modern theorists who have taken on the larger questions spawned by classical social theory. C. Wright Mills, Marvin Harris, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Gerhard Lenski have examined such phenomena and processes as the rise and impact of capitalism; the centralization and enlargement of authority; inequality; and the historical intensification of production and populations. Borrowing what is useful from the classics as well as relying on contemporary practitioners and empirical evidence, each theorist adds his own insights and interpretations in constructing a comprehensive perspective of sociocultural stability and change. This book fully synthesizes and documents each perspective, using language and examples that resonate with the general reader. A short biography on each theorist is also provided. ... Read more

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Classical social theory is alive!
Here is a work that covers four modern practioners of classical sociological analysis.Elwell explains his reasoning for analyzing the work of C. Wright Mills, Marvin Harris, Gerhard Lenski, and Immanuel Wallerstein, "By focusing on four recent practioners I hope to interest a new generation of sociology students in the excitement and rewards of holistic analyses."
Elwell laments the all too common practice of teaching sociological theory "as history".Instead, Elwell believes theory frames our understanding of history and society so that we can all better understand the 'world around us.'Elwell contributes to this undertaking by analyzing Mills, Lenski, Wallerstein, and Harris in a book that is accessible to both undergraduates and lay readers.Fortunately, Elwell's book is free from the sociological catch-phrases that characterize the work of myopic careerists and obscurantists.
Social theory is valuable to the extent that it helps render social processes visible and understandable.Each of the theorists covered borrowed heavily from the classical tradition of sociology (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Veblen) and each analyzed society as a system.The chapter on C. Wright Mills is the best summary of the mans work I know of and written with eminently readable prose-- documenting Mill's analyses of the Power Elites, Mass Society, rationalization, and the role of social science. Harris and Lenski both emphasize the impact of technology on production, work patterns, and inequality and contribute to the building of a research strategy of understanding past and contemporary societies alike.
Chapter 3 covers the work of the originator of world-systems analysis, Immanuel Wallerstein.Wallerstein is definitely one of the most original and controversial sociologists today.Wallerstein has dedicated his life to understanding what he calls `the capitalist world-system' and has pronounced that the world is currently experiencing the breakdown of the capitalist system. Elwell's book is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the rewarding task of understanding society through classical sociological analysis.

important sociology for undergrads and non-sociologists
I'm a historian, not a sociologist, and to be honest, I have found the work of some sociologists to be incomprehensible, jargon-laden stuff.That is most assuredly not the case here.Frank W. Elwell writes well, in a manner that should be comprehensible (if not easy--but then macrosociological theory isn't easy) for undergraduates, and was very interesting indeed for me.The four theorists are Marvin Harris (cultural materialism), Immanuel Wallerstein ("World-Systems Analysis"), Gerhard Lenski ("Ecological-Evolutionary Theory"), and the perhaps best known, at least to the general reader, C. Wright Mills (bureaucracy, elites, and all that good stuff).I do historiography (the study of historians and their interpretations of history), and I find that introducing students to an individual historian works better than introducing them to a topic.So just one of the things I like about this book is that Elwell focuses on individual thinkers rather than broad themes (though the themes emerge).There are even little boxed-off sections on the life of each of the theorists.The back cover is correct in its assertion that Elwell uses "language and examples that resonate with the general reader."I strongly recommend this book. ... Read more