About the Authors

Michael Hughes is Professor of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt University in 1979. He has been teaching introductory sociology for 26 years, having held teaching positions at Florence State University (now University of North Alabama) and the University of Tennessee at Nashville (now the downtown campus of Tennessee State University). He also regularly teaches courses in minority group relations, deviant behavior, the sociology of mental illness, and data analysis. He has held research positions as research associate at Vanderbilt University (1980-1982) and research fellow at University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (1992-1994). Currently on the editorial board of American Sociological Review, he also has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and Social Forces. With Walter R. Give he is author of the book Overcrowding in the Household , published by Academic Press in 1983. His research interests in mental health and mental illness, race and ethnicity, and crowding and living alone have resulted in over 50 articles published in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Psychology Quarterly, Criminology, Deviant Behavior, Archives of General Psychiatry, Psychology Today and other journals.

Carolyn J. Koehler is a freelance writer and editor and stay-at-home mother of two. She earned her Ph.D. degree in botany at Virginia Tech and has published in the Canadian Journal of Botany, Plant and Soil, and Ecologies. At the Virginia Water Resources Research Center she wrote public education publications about water quality and other environmental issues, including a book on drinking water standards. She has contributed to criminology and criminal justice textbooks, edited and helped with the writing of a student study guide (Straight A's: If I Can Do It, So Can You), and works with National Geography's elementary school computer curriculum program What's In Our Water?

James W. Vander Zanden is Professor Emeritus in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Ohio State University and previously taught at Duke University. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Vander Zanden is the author of the first four editions of Sociology: The Core. His other published works include eight books and more than twenty professional articles.