Textbooks
Education is at the heart of our mission to make a difference. Our goal is to support students’ learning with materials that foster understanding, confidence and skills.
We have a diverse and growing programme of textbooks and learning resources that are designed for Social Science courses at university and college level. We take pride in publishing quality content at affordable prices, and we cater to a wide range of learning styles in print and digital formats.
All of our textbooks are available on inspection and e-inspection (order here or use the link on the book pages). Lecturers are welcome to request print or digital inspection copies for potential recommendation on their reading lists and for student and library purchase. In return, we just ask for feedback on the books’ suitability for teaching purposes, in order to help us develop our publishing.
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Take a look at our textbooks below or browse by subject.
Making sense of Every Child Matters
Multi-professional practice guidance
This book considers the implications for practice of the 'Every Child Matters' (ECM) agenda for working with children, analysing the key issues from the perspective of the different professions that make up the 'new children's workforce'.
US Foreign Policy
Domestic Roots and International Impact
This textbook provides a valuable introduction to the construction and application of US foreign policy in the modern era, encouraging readers to think about how ideas, institutions and goals have been at work in the foreign policy of recent presidential administrations.
Social Problems in Popular Culture
This is the first book to make the link between popular culture and social problems. Drawing on historical and topical examples, the authors apply an innovative theoretical framework to examine how facets of popular culture shape how we think about, and respond to, social issues.
Human Growth and Development in Adults
Theoretical and Practice Perspectives
This textbook covers the key concepts, themes and issues relating to human growth and development in adults. It examines key topics and issues within professional practice with adults and their families and covers a wide range of practice areas, fuses essential theory with practical application and provides a wide range of learning features.
Social theory for beginners
Aimed at first-year undergraduates studying sociology and related disciplines, this introductory-level textbook presents key ideas and concepts in social theory and an account of their intellectual background.
Ageing, health and care
The ageing of the population has enormous policy implications for health care. This important new textbook, written by a leader in the field, covers key questions such as the fitness of older people in the future, the widening inequalities in the health of older people and how health in old age reflects habits and behaviour in earlier life.
Understanding the policy process
Analysing welfare policy and practice
Using core concepts of policy analysis "Understanding the policy process" builds up a full explanation of social policy change that can be applied to any aspect of welfare policy, public and social policy. This second edition of the book updates the first edition for the post-Blair era with international case studies from numerous countries.
Evidence Based Policing
An Introduction
Examining what makes something evidence-based and not merely evidence-informed, this book unifies the voices of police practitioners, academics, and pracademics. It provides real world examples of evidence-based police practices and how police research can be created and applied in the field.
Rationing in health care
The theory and practice of priority setting
The challenges faced by those rationing scarce health care resources have intensified recently. In an accessible style, this book tackles this challenge by exploring the latest thinking and practice on priority setting methods.
Understanding equal opportunities and diversity
The social differentiations and intersections of inequality
This book challenges the official discourse that shapes the debates on Equal Opportunities and Diversity (EO&D) at national, regional and European level and will be a key text for students and researchers of EO&D in many fields.
Organisational Behaviour for Social Work
Using real social work case examples, Organisational behaviour for social work unites the well-established study of behaviour in organizations with the special, and sometimes unusual, organizational settings of social work practice.
Changing Children's Services
Working and Learning Together
This book focuses on the drive towards increasingly integrated ways of working in children’s services across the UK. The new edition of this bestselling textbook critically examines the potential and reality of closer ‘working together’, asking whether such new ways of working will be able to respond more effectively to the needs of children.