Frank Hoffmann

Martin J Manning

Gerhard Falk

Learn the value of football to American society No sport reflects the American value system like football. Visitors to the United States need only watch a game or two to learn all they need to know about the American way of life and the beliefs, attitudes, and concerns of American society. Football and American Identity examines the social conditions and cultural implications found in the football subculture, represented by core values such as competition, conflict, diversity, power, economic success, fair play, liberty, and patriotism. This unique book goes beyond the standard fare on football strategy and history, or the biographies of famous players and coaches, to analyze the reasons why the game is the essence of the American spirit. Author Gerhard Falk, Professor of Sociology at the State University College of New York at Buffalo, examines football as a game, as a business, and as a reflection of the diversity in American life. Football and American Identity also addresses the relationship between football and the media, with much of the game’s income generated by advertising and endorsements, and examines the presence of crime in football culture. The book discusses the development of the game—and those involved in it—at the Pop Warner, college, and professional levels, examining the social origin of players, coaches, cheerleaders, and owners. In addition, Football and American Identity analyzes the game’s fans and their devotion to “their” teams, examines why Pennsylvania is considered the “mother” of American football, and looks at the National Football League and its commissioners. Football and American Identity examines: how individualism and achievement can lead to mythological status why a person’s occupation is the most important indicator of prestige in the United States what the consequences are of earning more in a year than most Americans make in a lifetime why equality is vital to the ethnic make-up of American football teams why teamwork is important-in football and in industry how freedom is essential for taking the risks necessary for success and much more! Football and American Identity is an inside look at football as an American cultural phenomenon. Devoted and casual fans of the game, as well as academics working in sociology, will find this unique book interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

Football and American Identity

How We Undermine Our Own Strength

The Assault on Democracy

Thomas S. Weinberg

Ursula Adler Falk

The American Drug Culture uses sociological and other perspectives to examine drug and alcohol use in U.S. society. The text is arranged topically rather than by drug categories and explores diverse aspects of drug use, including popular culture, sexuality, legal and criminal justice systems, other social institutions, and mental and physical health. It covers alcohol, the most widely used drug in the United States, more extensively than other texts on this subject. The authors include case studies from their own field research that give students empathetic insights into the situations of those suffering from substance and alcohol abuse.

The American Drug Culture

Ursula A. Falk

The youth culture has taken over in the Western world, and the United States is its champion. Has this cultural emphasis widened the generation gap, or is it just a natural by-product of the generational differences that exist in all societies? Is the generation gap such a problem as the media makes it out to be? Gerhard Falk discusses the dramatic ways that young people differentiate themselves from the parent generation as they seek to overcome the identity problem all adolescents face. He explores the development of a youth culture in the US, and its manifestations in daily life from recreation and music to dress codes, language, sex, and status games and cliques, gangs and reference groups. The book compares the competing influences of parents and peers, from homeless migrants and hippies, punks and rockers to the part-time workers earning money for family reasons or to revel in expensive amusements and status symbols. New media and entertainment forms confront younger and younger children with drugs, sex and other adult concerns in high school, middle school and even in the lower grades. This book reflects on changes in the concept of adolescence over the centuries and introduces the reader to aspects of the youth culture seldom known to those who do not live it. While a segment of our youth are the direct and indirect victims of divorce, poverty, homelessness and other forms of social instability, studies show that many young Americans maintain the values of their parents despite the much-touted generation gap. The authors contend that, in fact, most of today's youngsters have a great deal of sympathy for their parents and share their values. * Dr. Gerhard Falk is professor ofsociology at State University College at Buffalo, NY. He is the author of fourteen books including most recently Football and American Identity and Grandparents, The Supporting Generation with Ursula Falk. He is a recipient of the SUCB President's Award for Excellence in Research and the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Ursula Falk is a psychotherapist in private practice. She has published eight books, and is a recipient of the National Association of Social Workers Lifetime Achievement Award.

Youth Culture and the Generation Gap

On Being Old in an Alienated Society

Ageism, the Aged, and Aging in America

Clifford Falk

A unique study providing evidence that murder is predictable and the exceptionally high murder rate in the United States is reduceable. Part I examines 50 case histories and an analysis of 912 homicides from an original study made in Erie County (Buffalo), New York. Part II discusses multicide, serial killers, and mass murderers. Part III covers assassinations and executions and a final part presents conclusions.

Murder, an Analysis of Its Forms, Conditions, and Causes

What is it in human nature that leads us to label some as insiders and stigmatize others as outsiders?Sociologist Gerhard Falk examines the social psychology that motivates this process of exclusion, focusing on the outcasts in contemporary American society and comparing current experience with examples from the past. Referring to the work of Emile Durkheim and Erving Goffman, Falk reviews the whole range of stigmatized people from the mentally ill to ordinary people with unpopular occupations, like undertakers and trash collectors. Amid the wide diversity of stigmatized persons, he finds two basic types of outsiders: the existential and the achieved. The first group comprises those who are stigmatized because of their very existence, regardless of their specific actions: the mentally handicapped, for example. The second group describes those whose actions or life conditions have resulted in stigma: from high achievers (often subject to resentment) to criminals. Falk also looks at the ways in which writers past and present have dramatized stigmatized characters in literature.This fascinating overview of a long-standing and widespread social problem will be of interest to all those concerned about creating a more fair-minded society.Gerhard Falk, Ph.D. (Kenmore, NY), professor of sociology at the State University of New York College in Buffalo, NY, is the author of Sex, Gender and Social Change: The Great Revolution; Ageism, The Aged and Aging in America; and five other books.

How We Treat Outsiders

Stigma

Sex, Gender and Social Change details the drastic changes in the attitudes toward gender in society since the seventeenth century and its effects on each gender. Gerhard Falk examines the change in roles of men and women as the power structure evens out between the genders. He begins with the place of women in the working world as they gain prominence as executives, in the military, as religious leaders, and in the political arena. He then moves into less studied aspects such as the move toward gender neutrality in fields like nursing and engineering, and the difference between the involvement of the genders in crime. Finally, he approaches the evolution and future of personal lives as roles change within the family and women take greater control over their sex lives.

The Great Revolution

Sex, Gender, and Social Change

Gerhard Falk describes twelve inventions that transformed the United States from a rural and small-town community to an industrial country of unprecedented power. The book is both a sociological analysis and a history of technology in the United States in the past two hundred years.

Gerhard Falk

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