The American Sociological Association’s annual meetings took place this week in Chicago. As usual, there were far too many sessions and not nearly enough time to catch up with everyone I wanted to talk to. If you are hoping to run into people at giant conferences like these, the best place to meet them is at the book exhibit. This is also the best place to hang out for another obvious reason: the books. Lots and lots of lovely new books.

So here’s my post-ASA reading list. These are the books that caught my eye at the exhibit. Some are brand new, some are smack in my own area of interest, some are by friends of mine, and some are just intrinsically interesting. I think all of them are worth buying.

Legalizing Gender Inequality by Robert L. Nelson and William P. Bridges. This one has been out for a while, but it wasn’t until this year’s book exhibit that I picked up my own copy. Nelson and Bridges examine how, in a series of landmark pay discrimination cases, the courts accepted a simple theory of wage determination by neutral market mechanisms. Their decision to do so—- on poor to downright bad evidence—- shifted the balance of power towards employers in these cases, as judges now assume as a matter of fact that wages are set in the market rather than by some other mechanism. Nelson and Bridges demonstrate that, in the cases that set these precedents, it was highly unlikely that market mechansisms were responsible for gender-based pay disparities. The authors develop a theory that locates wage-setting mechanisms inside organizations, rather than in a neutral market on the one hand, or society-wide sexist attitudes on the other. By assuming a priori that markets set wages, the courts contribute to the institutionalization of the organizational mechanisms that actually do the job. Terrifically interesting stuff that every believer in the standard economic account of labor markets should sit down and read.

For the Common Good? American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity by Jason Kaufman. Jason was a few years ahead of me in the sociology department at Princeton. His book takes on one of the sacred cows of American political sociology and political science. Alexis DeTocqueville long ago claimed that robust civic associations were the most distinctive feature of American life, and the backbone its democracy. In Europe, DeTocqueville argued people “look upon an association as a weapon to be hastily fashioned and immediately used in conflict” whereas in the United States, people—- especially minorities—- associate “in order to show their numerical strength, and … to stimulate competition, and to discover those arguments which are most fitted to act upon the majority.” European associations belief they represent the common good; American ones “only represent a minority of the nation” and so “they argue and they petition”. This image of civic-minded joiners in pursuit of the common good has a strong hold on American political thought, right down to recent arguments by the likes of Robert Putnam about the dangers of decline in civic America. It gets a much-needed jolt in the behind from Jason’s book. Drawing on archival research from the “golden age of fraternity” (from about 1870-1914), he argues that people joined fraternal organizations largely for reasons which had nothing to do with the common good, and that the associations themselves did much to foster social exclusion and divisiveness rather than engagement and participation.

Heat Wave: A social autopsy of disaster in Chicago by Eric Klinenberg I’d write more about this but it’s been all over the news. So read an interview with the author to get the full story.

Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs by Rakesh Khurana They wouldn’t let me buy this at the conference, but the author comes highly recommened from Marion, and the subject couldn’t be more topical. Khurana gets inside the CEO selection process. He argues that “corporations have increasingly sought CEOs who are above all else charismatic, whose fame and force of personality impress analysts and the business media, but whose experience and abilities are not necessarily right for companies’ specific needs. The labor market for CEOs … is far less rational than we might think.” This book looks like it adds contemporary detail to the broad historical story told in books like Neil Fligstein’s The Transformation of Corporate Control.