Michael J. Shanahan

Because life course sociology is an imaginative framework, Biography and the Sociological Imagination is less about "what we know" about the life course and more about "how to think" about changing societies and aging by drawing on life course ideas. Drawing from the latest research and using stories of real people, Shanahan and Macmillan spur readers to imagine alternative ways of organizing society and the implications of these alternatives for the biography.

In recent years the factors influencing young people's transition to adulthood have become much more problematic. This edited collection of papers from Pennsylvania State University's fifth annual Family Symposium explores the main issues involved in this transition, such as the widening gap between rich and poor, downsizing, global competition, and technological change. These factors have made jobs scarce in many areas, especially inner cities, and have profoundly affected family formation, making cohabitation, delays in marriage and parenthood, and prolonged residence with parents, the life choices of many young adults. These and other issues are explored by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, who focus on four main questions: alterations in the structure of opportunity, prior experiences in the family, prior experiences in the workplace, and career development and marriage formation.