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Joel Best, author of the best-selling Damned Lies and Statistics, and new coauthor Brian Monahan offer a fresh approach to the social problems course. Rather than overloading students with details and data, the book focuses on how and why particular conditions come to be constructed... Read Full Overview

An important alternative to traditional texts in its field, Social Problems explains how and why particular conditions come to be constructed as social problems. By evaluating the construction process, Joel Best, author of the best-selling Damned Lies and Statistics, equips students... Read Full Overview

Updated with nine new end-of-chapter case studies and more than 50 new boxed examples, the Third Edition of Joel Best's Social Problems elucidates the complex, competitive process through which social problems emerge, paying particular attention to how resources and rhetoric... Read Full Overview

Updated with over 60 new examples and case studies, Social Problems shows how activists, experts, and their opponents frame social problems through the logic that they use; the rhetoric of claims-making; and the ways that access to resources determines who gets their claims heard... Read Full Overview

Best helps readers think carefully about how activists, experts, and their opponents frame social problems through the logic that they use, the rhetoric of claims-making, and the ways that access to resources determines who gets their claims heard. In order to help students connect... Read Full Overview