The classics are regularly reprinted, and, while Marx is both difficult and passe, Weber and Durkheim are still eminently readable. So I would recommend H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge, 1991), and Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (London: Routledge, 1970).
There are so many modern works that deserve to be classics that it is invidious to select just a few, but the following from the 195os and 196os combine acute observation and sociological reasoning to exemplify the best traditions of the discipline.
Becker, Howard, Outsiders (London: Free Press, 1963).
Dalton, Melville, Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1959).
Goffman, Erving,The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969).
Gouldner, Alvin, Wildcat Strike (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957).
Lockwood, David, The Blackcoated Worker (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958).
Young, Michael, and Willmott, Peter, Family and Kinship in East London (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961).
Since the 196os the higher-education sector of all industrial societies has expanded massively, and with it the number of sociologists. The growth and increased specialization of the discipline have made it increasingly difficult for any studies to become known outside their particular field. The following are three books from the 199os that show sociology at its creative best.
Devine, Fiona, Social Class in America and Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997).
Foster, Janet, Villains: Crime and Community in the Inner City (London: Routledge, iggo).
Jamieson, Lynn, Intimate Relations (Cambridge: Polity, 1997).
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