The Greatest Works of Sociology
This selection of sociological works is based on the continuing research carried out for The Greatest Literature of All Time and additional research into literature on sociology acclaimed by the world's readers, writers, critics and scholars.
The Greatest Works of Sociology includes both popular works aimed at educating the public on sociological topics, as well as expert research intended for those trained in the field.
You may also be interested in The Greatest Nonfiction or The Greatest Philosophy.
This list is updated as new works are discovered and appreciation of older works evolves. Please note the revision date when citing the list.
Latest update: November 20, 2025
The 33 Greatest Works of Sociology
1867–1893
Capital
by Karl Marx, Germany
Nonfiction, originally Das Kapital
1900
The Philosophy of Money
by Georg Simmel, Germany
Nonfiction
1903
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois, United States
Nonfiction collection, subtitled Essays and Sketches
1905
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
by Max Weber, Germany
Nonfiction
1922
Economy and Society
by Max Weber, Germany
Nonfiction
1923
History and Class
by György Lukács, Hungary
Nonfiction, subtitled Studies in Marxist Dialectics, originally Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein–Studien über marxistische Dialektik
1925
The Gift
by Marcel Mauss, France
Nonfiction, subtitled The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, also known as The Burden of Our Time, originally Essai sur le don: forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques
1929–1935
Prison Notebooks
by Antonio Gramsci, Italy
Nonfiction
1934
Mind, Self and Society
by George Herbert Mead, United States
Nonfiction
1937
The Structure of Social Action
by Talcott Parsons, United States
Nonfiction
1939
The Civilizing Process
by Norbert Elias, Germany
Nonfiction
1944
The Great Transformation
by Karl Polanyi, Hungary
Nonfiction, subtitled The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
1948
From the Soil
by Fei Xiaotong, China
Nonfiction, subtitled The Foundations of Chinese Society
1949
Social Theory and Social Structure
by Robert K. Merton, United States
Nonfiction
1949
The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir, France
Nonfiction, originally Le Deuxième Sexe
1951
The Origins of Totalitarianism
by Hannah Arendt, Germany
Nonfiction
1955
Triste Tropiques
by Claude Lévi-Strauss, France
Nonfiction
1956
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
by Erving Goffman, United States
Nonfiction
1959
The Sociological Imagination
by C. Wright Mills, United States
Nonfiction
1959
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
by Karl Popper, Austria
Nonfiction
1961
The Wretched of the Earth
by Frantz Fanon, Algeria
Nonfiction
1961
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs, Canada
Nonfiction
1962
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas Kuhn, United States
Nonfiction
1963
The Making of the British Working Class
by E.P. Thompson, United States
Nonfiction
1966
The Social Construction of Reality
by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Austria
Nonfiction
1975
Discipline and Punish
by Michel Foucault, France
Nonfiction, subtitled The Birth of the Prison
1978
Orientalism
by Edward Said, United States
Nonfiction
1979
Distinction
by Pierre Bourdieu, France
Nonfiction, subtitled A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
1981
The Theory of Communicative Action
by Jürgen Habermas, Germany
Nonfiction
1986–2013
The Sources of Social Power
by Michael Mann, England
Nonfiction
1997
Guns, Germs, and Steel
by Jared Diamond, United States
Nonfiction, subtitled The Fates of Human Societies, also known as Guns, Germs, and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years
2001
Nickel and Dimed
by Barbara Ehrenreich, United States
Nonfiction, subtitled On (Not) Getting By in America
2011
Sapiens
by Yuval Noah Harari, Israel
Nonfiction, subtitled A Brief History of Humankind, originally Qitzur Toldot ha-Enoshut
