Seeking to understand adolescents as social actors, this work considers the benefits and drawbacks of the debating experience. It analyzes the training of debaters in rapid-fire speech, rules of logical…

Offers an inside look at how meteorologists and forecasters predict the weather. Through field observation and interviews, this work shows that weather forecasts are often shaped as much by social…

A chess match seems as solitary an endeavor as there is in sports: two minds, on their own, in fierce opposition. In contrast, Gary Alan Fine argues that chess is…

Presenting essays on America’s most reviled traitor, its worst president, and its most controversial literary ingenue (Benedict Arnold, Warren G. Harding, and Lolita), among others, the author analyzes negative, contested…

From 1945 to 1960, the University of Chicago was home to a group of students whose work has come to define a second Chicago School of sociology. In this book…

In The Global Grapevine, two leading authorities on rumor, folklore, and urban legend–Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis–shed light on what contemporary rumors can tell us about the fears and…