Publications
Klinenberg's first book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2002. The book is an account and analysis of the 1995 Chicago heat wave. The book won several scholarly prizes, including the American Sociological Association Robert Park Book Award, the Urban Affairs Association best book award, the British Sociological Association book prize, the Mirra Komarovsky Book Prize, and honorable mention for the C Wright Mills Award, and was a Favorite Book selection by the Chicago Tribune . [3] A theatrical adaptation of the book premiered in Chicago in 2008. [4]
His second book, Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, was called "politically passionate and intellectually serious", [5] "a must-read for those who wonder what happened to good radio, accurate reporting and autonomous public interest". [6]
His third book, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, was published in February 2012 by Penguin Press. [7] [8] Going Solo has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, and Hungarian, and has generated widespread debate. In a cover story, Time magazine featured Going Solo as "the number one idea that is changing our lives." [9]
In 2013, Klinenberg wrote an influential article in the New Yorker on Hurricane Sandy and climate change adaptation, in which he explained the role of social infrastructure in protecting cities and communities. [10]
Klinenberg co-wrote a book about romance with comedian Aziz Ansari, Modern Romance: An Investigation , published in June 2015. [11] [12]
In 2018, Klinenberg published a book on the role of social infrastructure in American culture titled Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. [13] Klinenberg analyzes the role of public spaces such as libraries, parks, gardens, and universities among other investments help to strengthen and heal communities and build social capital.
His most recent book, 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed, was published in 2024. The book offers a "social autopsy" of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on New York City and an eclectic group of seven residents, among them a school principal, a community organizer, a bar owner, and a subway conductor, whose lives and communities were upended by disease and social disruption.
In addition to his books and scholarly articles, Klinenberg has contributed to The New York Times Magazine , Rolling Stone , The London Review of Books , The Nation , The Washington Post , Mother Jones , The Guardian , Le Monde diplomatique , Slate , Playboy , the radio program This American Life [14] and the television program Real Time with Bill Maher .
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.
A heat wave or heatwave, sometimes described as extreme heat, is a period of abnormally hot weather. Definitions vary but are similar. A heat wave is usually measured relative to the usual climate in the area and to normal temperatures for the season. Temperatures that humans from a hotter climate consider normal, can be regarded as a heat wave in a cooler area. This would be the case if the warm temperatures are outside the normal climate pattern for that area. High humidity often occurs during heat waves as well. This is especially the case in oceanic climate countries. Heat waves have become more frequent, and more intense over land, across almost every area on Earth since the 1950s, the increase in frequency and duration being caused by climate change.
The July 1995 Chicago heat wave led to 739 heat-related deaths in Chicago over a period of five days. Most of the victims of the heat wave were elderly poor residents of the city, who did not have air conditioning, or had air conditioning but could not afford to turn it on, and did not open windows or sleep outside for fear of crime. The heat wave also heavily impacted the wider Midwestern region, with additional deaths in both St. Louis, Missouri and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Urban sociology is the sociological study of cities and urban life. One of the field’s oldest sub-disciplines, urban sociology studies and examines the social, historical, political, cultural, economic, and environmental forces that have shaped urban environments. Like most areas of sociology, urban sociologists use statistical analysis, observation, archival research, census data, social theory, interviews, and other methods to study a range of topics, including poverty, racial residential segregation, economic development, migration and demographic trends, gentrification, homelessness, blight and crime, urban decline, and neighborhood changes and revitalization. Urban sociological analysis provides critical insights that shape and guide urban planning and policy-making.
William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist, a professor at Harvard University, and an author of works on urban sociology, race, and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th President of the American Sociological Association, was a member of numerous national boards and commissions. He identified the importance of neighborhood effects and demonstrated how limited employment opportunities and weakened institutional resources exacerbated poverty within American inner-city neighborhoods.
Dark Age Ahead is a 2004 book by Jane Jacobs describing what she sees as the decay of five key "pillars" in "North America": community and family, higher education, science and technology, taxes and government responsiveness to citizen's needs, and self-regulation by the learned professions.
In legal definitions for interpersonal status, a single person refers to an individual who is not in committed relationships, or is not part of a civil union. In common usage, the term single is often used to refer to someone who is not involved in either any type of sexual relationship, romantic relationship, including long-term dating, engagement, marriage, or someone who is "single by choice". Single people may participate in dating and other activities to find a short-term partner or spouse.
Theda Skocpol is an American sociologist and political scientist, who is currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She is best known as an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches, as well as her "state autonomy theory". She has written widely for both popular and academic audiences. She has been President of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science History Association.
Aziz Ismail Ansari is an American actor, filmmaker and stand-up comedian. He is known for his role as Tom Haverford on the NBC series Parks and Recreation (2009–2015) and as creator and star of the Netflix series Master of None (2015–2021) for which he won several acting and writing awards, including two Emmys and a Golden Globe, which was the first award received by an Asian American actor for acting on television.
Steven Shapin is an American historian and sociologist of science. He is the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is considered one of the earliest scholars on the sociology of scientific knowledge, and is credited with creating new approaches. He has won many awards, including the 2014 George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society for career contributions to the field.
Caitlin Flanagan is an American writer and social critic. A contributor to The Atlantic since February 2001, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2019.
The Summer 2006 North American heat wave was a severe heat wave that affected most of the United States and Canada, killing at least 225 people and bringing extreme heat to many locations. At least three died in Philadelphia, Arkansas, and Indiana. In Maryland, the state health officials reported that three people died of heat-related causes. Another heat related death was suspected in Chicago.
Mitchell Duneier is an American sociologist and ethnographer. He is currently Maurice P. During Professor and department chair of Sociology at Princeton University and has also served as a regular Visiting Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Public Culture is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary academic journal of cultural studies published by Duke University Press. It is sponsored by the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.
Climate change and poverty are deeply intertwined because climate change disproportionally affects poor people in low-income communities and developing countries around the world. The impoverished have a higher chance of experiencing the ill-effects of climate change due to the increased exposure and vulnerability. Vulnerability represents the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change including climate variability and extremes.
The term singleton describes those who live in a single-person household, especially those who prefer the lifestyle of living alone. It was popularized by the Bridget Jones novels and films, but it is also used in sociology.
Daniel P. Aldrich is an academic in the fields of political science, public policy and Asian studies. He is currently full professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University. Aldrich has held several Fulbright fellowships, including a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Applied Public Policy at Flinders University in Australia in 2023, a Fulbright Specialist in Trinidad-Tobago in 2018, a Fulbright research fellowship at the University of Tokyo's Economic's Department for the 2012–2013 academic year, and a IIE Fulbright Dissertation Fellowship in Tokyo in 2002–2003. His research, prompted in part by his own family's experience of Hurricane Katrina, explores how communities around the world respond to and recover from disaster.
Andrew Delano Abbott is an American sociologist and social theorist working at the University of Chicago. He is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology and the college. His research topics range from occupations and professions to the philosophy of methods, the history of academic disciplines, to the sociology of knowledge. He is also the founder of the field of sequence analysis. He was the editor of the American Journal of Sociology from 2000 to 2016.
Climate fiction is literature that deals with climate change. Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science, works of climate fiction may take place in the world as we know it, in the near future, or in fictional worlds experiencing climate change. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. Climate fiction typically involves anthropogenic climate change and other environmental issues as opposed to weather and disaster more generally. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society.
Modern Romance: An Investigation is a research book written by American actor and stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari and American sociologist and New York University professor Eric Klinenberg. The book was published in 2015 and provides research information exploring the change in romantic society that has occurred in the past decade. One of the main concepts in the book concerns the paradox of choice in relationships: having more options may seem better at first glance, though so many options can ultimately make "settling" for anyone a lot more difficult.
