When I was a child in the 1950s, on the bookshelf of our suburban home was a book called "The Exurbanites" by AC Spectorsky. I was too young to be interested in reading it, but in later years, I still remembered my father's description of what it was about in the vague way that I also remembered the look of the illustrations by Osborn, a political cartoonist, and the pale green cover. But I never read it; I figured it was a piece of inferior pop sociology of the time, a bit of intellectual snobbery that was reinforced when Spectorsky signed on at Playboy as the resident brain trust.
Now I see in the latest issue of the New Yorker in an article about Playboy centerfolds (one must keep up with the literature) that the AC stood for Auguste Comte. Does anyone know anything more about Spectorsky? Was he trained as a sociologist -- aside from the sociology he presumably learned at his mother's knee? (BTW, it might be interesting to revisit the sociological books over the decades that found an audience and were talked about outside of the academy -- The Lonely Crowd, The Organization Man through to Bowling Alone.) Jay Livingston Montclair State College --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
