Adapted from David M. Newman’s best-selling Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, this briefer, streamlined version continues to show students how to see the “unfamiliar in the familiar,” inspiring them to think critically about their own lives and social contexts. As in the full text, the author’s approachable writing style and lively personal anecdotes make the Brief Edition a text that “reads like a real book.” It uses the metaphors of “architecture” and “construction” to help students understand that society is not something that exists “out there,” independently of themselves; it is a human creation that is planned, formed, maintained, or altered by individuals. Rather than surveying every subfield in sociology, the Brief Edition focuses on the individual and society, the construction of self and society, and social inequality in the context of social structures.