“william graham sumner”

Robert Morris' tombstone states that he was "The Financier"; officially, however, he was Superintendent of Finance. Whatever his title, Robert Morris played an integral role in financing the American Revolution, and Yale Professor William G. Sumner examines Morris' life and actions to enhance our un... More

...Written more than fifty years ago--in 1883--WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER is even more pertinent today than at the time of its first publication. Then the arguments and "movements" for penalizing the thrifty, energetic, and competent by placing upon them more and more of the burdens of th... More

William Graham Sumner was an influential professor of sociology and politics at Yale College and president of the American Sociological Association from 1908 to 1909, and it was in this early classic textbook of sociology, first published in 1906, that he coined the term folkways, to denote the habi... More

First published in 1882, this remains a central biographical study of Jackson and the foundation on which his subsequent biographers built. The core of the book is a detailed study of the public questions of Jackson' administrations, their background, and the way in which they were handled.... More

The title of this 1883 classic of laissez-faire economics and sociology is ironic: the social classes do not, the author concludes, owe each other anything. Demolishing the theory of group obligation and fully embracing the concepts of dog-eat-dog social Darwinism, Sumner rages against the notion th... More