Whether its your major, for an intro class, or just for fun, everyone can walk away with something from this book. It written well, and really makes you think about our society.

I've read other sociological works on inner city residents and was invariably disturbed by the soulless way in which the subjects were portrayed. No doubt, the authors of those works would defend their method as being objective and showing rigor. However, at some level, the objectivity becomes stultifying and numbing.

Duneier cuts through all of this by portraying real people as human beings for whom he cares deeply. At the same time, he is able to pull back from the personal stories and draw conclusions that are intellectually sound. One feels a deep sense of pride in the men whose lives are profiled in Slim's Table and a lingering sense of regret that they seem to be a dying breed.

This book is the rare work that appeals in equal parts to the intellect and the soul.

Last spring I took a course from Mitchell entitled Urban Sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara. Mitchell would read us exerts from the book and I found it very intriguing. This summer I decided to purchase the book so I could have my very own copy, it's great! The men Mitchell writes about and talked about in class seem to be on my mind; these men are normal men, making the streets their home. I enjoyed their humor throughout the book and Mitchell's too. I highly recommend this book and highly respect Mitchell. I can't wait to read his other book entitled Streetwise.

Sidewalk is a detailed look into the everyday life of Greenwich Street homeless dwellers. The author illustrates through social structure assessment, how these men affect the social order on the sidewalk. The book also touches on the struggles and injustices that these men endure, while they try to make a honest living selling books and magazines. I found some of the their life stories to be significantly tragic, but at the same time hilarious. This book is a must read and shouldn't be overlooked. I wouldn't be surprise if a movie deal or book award is currently in the works for this non-fiction literature masterpiece.

This is an excellent book -- a page turner. Mitch Duneier allows us a look at the corporate structure of the street vending business through his living and working among the street vendors as well as taped coversations and quotes from the various vendors. We are allowed to meet the vendors and peek into some of the reasons they have become vendors. I have always seen street vendors -- but was unaware of the complexities of the business. The research for this book was thorough and complete. Mitch is an excellent researcher and writer. Ovie Carter brings us superior photos allowing us to see the vendors we have met through Mitch's words.

Having read "Slim's Table," Mitch Duneier and Ovie Carter's first venture, I can say that "Sidewalk" is equal in every way.

I look forward to a third book collaborating the talents of Mitch Duneier and Ovie Carter.

Sidewalk is a brutal look into the human condition that many would wish never existed. It's about The lives and times of a few homeless individuals, who are trying to make an honest living by recycling discarded books and magazines. The book is mostly centered on the social effect these Greenwich Village occupants have on the sidewalk life scene. I found their life stories to be significantly tragic and at times very funny. The stories within this book reach out to the reader for sympathy, but at the same time gives the reader a wholehearted lift. Sidewalk is a must read and should not be overlooked.

This book may give you the "meat and potatoes" of sociology but unfortunetly it doesn't give you more than that. If your goal is to put some of your curiosity into perspective this is propably the book. But if you want to understand the field of sociology as an academic discipline this suffers from not focusing on theories but on themes. It will spark the "sociological imagination" but I will not read the book again and again.

This book may be helpful in high school but for college and up you need to supplement (or replace) it with one which focus on theories and theorists like "Classical & Modern Social Theory" by Heine Andersen and Lars Bo Kaspersen which is the best introduction to theorists from Marx to Giddens IMO. THIS is the book that will follow me always.

This [2nd Edition] is about as thick a book as some bibles are, but as bibles come also on pocket sizes, so should this book! It gives great previews on different aspects of everyday life, but doesn't offer anything new. This is like a referendum into sociology's different sides in whole. I wonder if the edition 3 will be as much "copy and paste" from edition 2 as this edition is from the first edition...

This book makes me love sociology, and understand it. I love the down to earth examples from real life situations, such as people working in health clubs and people on the streets and the way this gets used to introduce the meat and potatoes of sociology.