Roscoe C. Hinkle

HENRY GRAYSON. The Crisis of the Middle Class. Pp. xv, 172. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1955.

This book is the result of the Josiah Mason Memorial Lectures at Birmingham, 1953. It raises questions which are of importance to the student of social science. There are eight chapters. The first four deal respectively with the nature of social action; personality, society and culture; the scientific approach; and the small group. The last four deal with the subject of assimilation, deviants, the grand manner, and the sociology of knowledge. It is the author’s contention that psychology and sociology are elaborations of ideas which inevitably arise from our everyday intercourse with people like ourselves, and that sociology and psychology unavoidably spring from social action. Social action, Sprott holds, is the basic concept in the social sciences. Four aspects of social action consist of: (1) interaction itself, (2) the social constructs within which it is performed, (3) the beliefs which it produces and which in turn guide it, and (4) the physical and demographic environment in which it takes place. The appearance of disorder which seems