If sociology could teach everyone just one thing, what would it be? "The Forest and the Trees" is one sociologist's response to the hypothetical - the core insight with the greatest potential to change how people see the world and themselves in relation to it. This revised and updated edition features: a new chapter that brings together the various aspects of the sociological model described in previous chapters with a detailed application to the origins of racism; a discussion of how individuals can participate in social change by stepping off paths of least resistance; and, the addition of graphics to illustrate the sociological model of systems and individuals.

Allan G. Johnson is a nationally recognized writer, novelist, and public speaker who has worked on issues of privilege, oppression, and social inequality since receiving his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan in 1972. His nonfiction writing has been translated into several languages and excerpted in numerous anthologies. His novels, The First Thing and the Last and Nothing Left to Lose, come from a lifelong devotion to the art of writing coupled with a passionate commitment to understanding what it means to be a human being in a complex world full of unnecessary suffering. He shares his life with Nora L. Jamieson, a writer, healer, and gatherer of women. They live in the hills of northwestern Connecticut.