Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

The Tyler Collection: CASBS's Gift to the Social Sciences

CASBS celebrates 70 years & 2,000 volumes of the Tyler Collection – books conceived, drafted, or completed by fellows while in residence. Discover its gems & fellows' favorites.
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by Mike Gaetani

Tyler Collection classics >

Fellows' favorite Tyler books >

The inaugural CASBS fellows class took residence at the Center in September 1954. The first books emerging from that fellowship year – worked on in some capacity by fellows while they were fellows – were published in 1955. There are two, or at least two we know about: The Language of Social Research: A Reader in the Methodology of Social Research, co-edited by Paul Lazarsfeld (the other editor, Morris Rosenberg, became a CASBS fellow in the 1956-57 academic year); and The Thematic Apperception Test: An Introductory Manual for its Clinical Use with Adults, by Morris I. Stein.

Copies of the two were the first to enter what became and continues to be one of the world’s most renowned book collections of – and its authors among the most distinguished scholars of – post-War social and behavioral science research and inquiry. Though unnamed at first, the collection eventually was dedicated in honor of the Center’s founding director, Ralph Tyler, who led CASBS from 1954 to 1966.

The Ralph W. Tyler Collection, located within CASBS's Ruth H. and John G. Neukom Reading Room [CASBS files]
The Ralph W. Tyler Collection, located within CASBS's Ruth H. and John G. Neukom Reading Room. [CASBS files]

In 2025, the Center commemorates 70 years of the Ralph W. Tyler Collection. Earlier in the year, the collection also surpassed 2,000 volumes, a second milestone worthy of celebration.

For the uninitiated, the Tyler Collection is the furthest thing from a museum piece of untouchable, stodgy, cobweb-covered books under lock and key. Rather, it’s a living, breathing collection accessible to those working under the Center’s umbrella, and thus requires continuous maintaining. It expands at a pace of about 15-20 new entries per year and resides in the Center’s Ruth H. and John G. Neukom Reading Room.

“Though the room doesn’t grow, the collection does. Each year it’s an increasing challenge to create new shelf space, but it’s a good problem to have,” said Jason Gonzales, CASBS’s librarian tasked with administering the collection since 2015. “It’s gratifying when fellows check out Tyler books from the library or when library staff find Tyler books lying on tables in the reading room. It means the books, some decades old, remain relevant to contemporary social science research and problem solving.”

Fellows and visitors alike will attest that nothing beats the tactile experience of browsing the physical Tyler Collection and pulling books from their shelves. The insights and thought leadership are in one’s hands, inches from one’s face. The public can view a 413-page list of Tyler books on the Center’s website, and use a search field to look for Tyler books by author, title, publisher, or fellowship year.1  A separate web page highlights books entered into the Tyler Collection in the past 10 years or so.

But in its early decades, before the internet and online databases, details about the collection, or even evidence of its existence, were difficult for the intellectually curious among the public to discover. The collection was known largely among fellows and those in their professional networks. As former director Gardner Lindzey put it, the Center maintained “a tradition of relative obscurity” in its secluded location and “generally pursued a policy of quiet avoidance of the public gaze.” When the Center printed its first bibliography of the Tyler Collection in 1979, Lindzey noted that the list represented “the most objective and tangible evidence of the Center’s fruitfulness” as well as “an acceptance of responsibility for increased communication with the external world.”2 In 1995, director Neil Smelser struck similarly muted tones shortly after the Center celebrated its 40th anniversary, the collection having doubled in size since the late 1970s.3 

2025-26 fellow Nasandratra Ravonjiarison is reading a Tyler book while the Tyler Collection looms behind her.
The Tyler Collection is actively used by those working under the Center's umbrella. Here, 2025-26 fellow Nasandratra Ravonjiarison is reading Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions by Batja Mesquita (fellow 2016-17). [CASBS files]

Though the Center today engages in robust external outreach efforts along a number of dimensions, for many the collection – or specific books and fellows represented within it — remains the Center’s principal calling card, embodying a benchmark of excellence to which other scholarly institutions aspire.

Once one becomes familiar with the Tyler Collection, and through whatever means, one thing is clear: it is the jewel in the Center’s crown and a gift to the social and behavioral sciences enterprise. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author and 2014-15 CASBS fellow Paul Starr put it:

If you go into the Center’s library and look at the Tyler Collection, you will see literally hundreds of books written at the Center — evidence that the trail of individual curiosity social scientists have followed here has led to a remarkable trail of accomplishment. Although there is no way to measure the Center’s exact impact, without its support many of those books would not have been written, or would have been less ambitious, and as a result the social sciences and intellectual life would have been much the poorer.4

The collection consists of books that were conceived, begun, drafted, completed, or otherwise worked on by fellows while in residence as fellows. In almost all cases, authors recognize the Center in some way (often effusively, which we love) in their books’ acknowledgments. Some contain handwritten author inscriptions. Many Tyler books have initiated new lines of inquiry, defined new fields, reviewed or summarized broad areas of research, proposed new theoretical perspectives, and refined methodological and analytical techniques. And some are classic, foundational works exerting significant influence on academic discourse, contemporary thought, governance, or public policy.

A select and, some may say, arbitrary sampling of Ralph W. Tyler Collection gems:
 

Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Robert Nozick (fellow 1971-72)

A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the
Antebellum North
John Hope Franklin (1973-74)

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
Leon Festinger (1955-56)

A Theory of Justice
John Rawls (1969-70)

After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord
In the World Political Economy
Robert O. Keohane (1977-78, 1987-88, 2004-05)

Attachment and Loss
John Bowlby (1957-58)

Class and Conflict in Industrial Society
Ralf Dahrendorf (1957-58)

Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Processes of Development
Stein Rokkan (1959-60, 1966-67)

Dynamics of Contention
Douglas McAdam (1991-92, 1997-98),
Sydney Tarrow (1980-81, 1997-98), &
Charles Tilly (1997-98)

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
Albert Hirschman (1968-69)

Gender and Discourse
Deborah Tannen (1992-93, 2012-13)

Knowledge and Decisions
Thomas Sowell (1976-77)

Language and a Woman’s Place
Robin Lakoff (1971-72)

Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
Robert D. Putnam (1974-75, 1988-89)

Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
Richard Rorty (1982-83)

Organizations
James March (1955-56, 1973-74) & Herbert Simon

Orientalism5
Edward Said (1975-76)

Passion: An Essay on Personality
Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1982-83)

Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics
Seymour Martin Lipset (1955-56, 1972-73)

Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America
Richard White (2003-04)

Stone Age Economics
Marshall Sahlins (1963-64)

The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture
Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides (1989-90),
John Tooby (1989-90), eds.

The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century
Svetlana Alpers (1975-76)

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism
Oliver Williamson (1977-78)

The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties
Daniel Bell (1958-59)

The Ghost in the Machine
Arthur Koestler (1964-65)

The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Karl Popper (1956-57)

The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution
Carolyn Merchant (1977-78, 2017-18)

The Evolution of Cooperation
Robert Axelrod (1976-77, 1981-82)

The Intellectual and the Marketplace
George Stigler (1957-58)

The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds
Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life
Alison Gopnik (2003-04)

The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
Elizabeth Eisenstein (1982-83, 1992-93)

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823
David Brion Davis (1972-73)

The Sexual Contract
Carole Pateman (1984-85)

The Social Animal
Elliot Aronson (1970-71, 1977-78)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn (1958-59)

The Theory of Political Coalitions
William Riker (1960-61)

The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics
Christopher Lasch (1988-89)

The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy
William Julius Wilson (1981-82)

When Harlem Was in Vogue
David Levering Lewis (1980-81)

Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
Claude Steele (1994-95)

Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City
Robert Dahl (1955-56, 1966-67)

Who Shall Live? Health, Economics, and Social Choice
Victor Fuchs (1972-73, 1978-79) 

Word and Object
Willard V. Quine (1958-59)

World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made 
Irving Howe (1968-69)
 


To scholars, students, and fans of the social and behavioral sciences, this is a stunning selection of books and authors. Any former CASBS fellows whose book enters the Tyler Collection claim this company, their book residing on the same shelves. New entries may well physically sit adjacent to classics, as the collection is arranged in alphabetical order by authors’ last names. Among most CASBS fellows, a vibe of reverence is palpable.

Within the collection, a plaque honors Ralph W. Tyler, the Center's first director and for whom the collection is named.
Within the collection, a plaque honors Ralph W. Tyler, the Center's first director and for whom the collection is named. [CASBS files]

“The prospect of entering the Tyler Collection at CASBS always filled me with veneration and awe,” said 2018-19 fellow Dan Kelly, whose book (coauthored with 2019-20 fellow Michael Brownstein and Alex Mavda) Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change entered the collection in October 2025. “Now, I am extremely proud to have our book join the ranks of all the other incredibly smart, pathbreaking, and just cool work contained on its shelves. Frankly, I’m kind of humbled, too.”

As with the entire collection, the list of classics within it is living and breathing, meant to be discussed, debated, and refined. Former fellows no doubt will quibble with or bemoan specific inclusions as well as omissions.6 Moreover, invariably some ‘classic’ books withstand the passage of time less well than others. New bodies of evidence and modes of thinking emerge. Collective tastes, preferences, and epistemologies gradually, and occasionally quickly, shift. As a result, some books risk losing their ‘classic’ or ‘gem’ status in the minds of many. Something resembling the “objective,” definitive list of Tyler classics, fixed in our minds and in time, likely will and probably should remain elusive.

At any rate, a focus solely on the Tyler classics necessarily draws attention away from hundreds upon hundreds of excellent, influential, impactful Tyler Collection books that are dear to the subjective hearts and minds of readers generally and CASBS fellows specifically. So, to widen our view of the collection, we reached out to a bunch of (mostly) recent CASBS fellows, asked them to identify their favorite Tyler Collection book (or two or three), and explain their choice in just a couple of sentences. View their selections and explanations of them below on this page.

But the sample is modest! Accordingly, here’s our request of all former CASBS fellows:

Do you have a favorite Tyler Collection book? One that has intellectually influenced or inspired you more than others? Or how about one that has changed the course of your discipline or sub-discipline? It doesn’t have to be a known ‘classic’ – just an important or fascinating book, in your estimation.

If one comes to mind, please identify the book, write one-to-four sentences explaining why it means so much to you, and send your thoughts to casbs-news@stanford.edu. We will add your contributions to this web page, displayed with those appearing below, in what we hope will be an ever-expanding set of testimonials for readers to view. Please participate!7

A display of six Tyler books in one of CASBS's outside spaces.
Occasionally, we'll give a few lucky Tyler books a little fresh air. [CASBS files]

And there certainly are untold missing Tyler Collection books (and possibly a classic or two) because they never were entered into the collection in the first place. Already by 1979, the time of the first printing of an official accounting of the Tyler Collection, CASBS director Gardner Lindzey referred to the bibliography as “undoubtedly incomplete.” Why? Fifteen years later, in the next iteration of the bibliography, director Neil Smelser shed a little more light on the incompleteness, noting an awareness that “many other books qualify but have not been sent to our library for the collection.” Smelser was alluding to the fact that – particularly in the pre-email era – it was sometimes difficult to maintain communication with former fellows and learn about their new, Tyler-eligible book publications. By the same token, many former fellows completing Tyler-eligible books – sometimes many years post-CASBS fellowship – neglected to inform the Center about their books’ existence in the world. The incompleteness of the collection persists to some degree today, notwithstanding occasional appeals by the Center through emails and e-newsletters.

In the preface of the 1995 Tyler bibliography, Smelser wrote: “We hope this publication will spur donations from authors whose books directly resulted from their fellowship year.” So, too, today, in collaboration with former CASBS fellows, we reach toward a still more complete Ralph W. Tyler Collection while celebrating its latest milestones.

*   *   *

Former fellows: please alert the Center about your Tyler-eligible books not yet residing in the collection (casbs-library@stanford.edu). We’d love it if you’d send us a copy. If sending us a copy is not feasible, ask your publisher to send CASBS a courtesy copy. They almost always readily agree. Or perhaps we can purchase a copy once informed about your book.

Endnotes

1 Viewers on the website also will notice a Tyler Collection of journal articles, a project launched in 2017 to locate and link to journal articles conceived, developed, or completed by fellows while they were in residence as fellows.

2 Gardner Lindzey in preface to “The Ralph W. Tyler Collection: 1954-1979,” pp. 2-3 [CASBS files]. The first published list of Tyler books coincided with the Center’s 25th anniversary in 1979. Lindzey, the Center’s longest-serving director (1975-1989), also was a three-time fellow (1955-56, 1963-64, 1971-72).

3 Neil J. Smelser preface to “Ralph W. Tyler Collection: 1954-1995,” pp. i-ii [CASBS files].

4 Paul Starr speech delivered at CASBS’s 60th anniversary celebration, 9 November 2014 [CASBS files].

5 Listen to “In Edward Said’s Shadow,” an episode of the CASBS podcast, Human Centered, about Orientalism on the CASBS website or on any of the major podcast apps.

6 But alert us to glaring errors! We welcome perspectives and commentary from across the CASBS community (casbs-news@stanford.edu). Upon examination, our classics list is notable for its dearth of female authors, an unfortunate reflection of the gender composition of fellows classes during the Center’s first few decades. One expects the number of classic Tyler books written by female fellows to increase when the Center staff or others compile updated ‘classics’ lists in the future.

7 We hope former fellows will think broadly across the collection; we’d like to display comments across as wide a range of books as possible – there are more than 2,000 volumes to choose from! Not sure if the book you have in mind is in the Tyler Collection? Search for it on our public website.

CASBS fellows reveal their favorite Tyler book(s):
 

Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age by Daniel Rodgers (fellow 1991-92, 2015-16)

This book’s trans-Atlantic perspective inspired in me a counterpart — what might be called a trans-Pacific perspective. That inspiration is well reflected in my book project, which approaches twentieth-century Chinese history through the lens of global science and technology. Going one step further, my work argues that Chinese historical actors were not passive emulators or mere recipients of developments in the Atlantic world, but rather passionate participants who helped transform trans-Atlantic trends into truly global ones.

Seung-Joon Lee (fellow 2024-25)

Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America by Frederick Cooper (1990-91, 1995-96, 2002-03)

This book is great because it's a model for how to do serious, materialist study of labor regimes on a theoretically-informed level and at a global scale without being reductive or teleological. Underdevelopment, the role of the peasantry—these are persistent challenges in the economies and politics of most of the planet, and yet are not the problems from which the study of labor often begins. This project confronts that shortcoming head-on, with a rich range of theoretical and empirical resources.

Gabriel Winant (fellow 2023-24)

Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration by Victor Nee (fellow 1996-97) and Richard Alba

It is the most significant theoretical work on immigrant integration in more than a generation. It is the first account of immigrant integration that explains how, over time, immigrant groups shape the US mainstream into which they assimilate. The book heavily influenced my own Tyler Collection book, The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants are Changing American Life (2017).

Tomás Jiménez (fellow 2012-13)

Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality: Changing Prospects in Western Society by Raymond Boudon (fellow 1972-73)

In this book, Boudon proposes that class inequalities in education can be decomposed into two parts: class inequalities in performance (“primary effects”), and class inequalities in the educational choices made by students from different class backgrounds, conditional on performance (“secondary effects”). The distinction between primary and secondary effects has been highly influential, and sociologists of education routinely draw on Boudon’s concepts when discussing educational inequality.

Michelle Jackson (fellow 2018-19)

Social and Economic Networks by Matthew Jackson (fellow 2005-06)

It has profoundly shaped the way I think about the structure of relationships, not only in markets but in social life more broadly. It’s a model of interdisciplinary clarity and intellectual reach, very much in the spirit of CASBS itself! (not to mention that Matt is the sweetest academic on earth!)

Elise Dermineur Reuterswärd (fellow 2018-19)

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States by Albert O. Hirschman (fellow 1968-69)

Hirschman is a hero of mine – one of several who have occupied CASBS studies over the years. EV&L is a classic of the short monograph. The book is so clearly written and the key ideas so general that even its flaws are rich sources of continuing inspiration.

John Ahlquist (fellow 2017-18)

Wolf Willow: a History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier by Wallace Stegner (fellow 1955-56)

I love Stegner’s Wolf Willow because it introduced me to the formation of the West, from the land to its first native settlers to the influence of the Spanish and then the founding of agricultural communities around Stegner’s hometown in southern Saskatchewan. He writes the memoir of a land as well as his own, so beautifully.

Seth Landefeld (fellow 2008-09, 2024-25)

The Social Psychology of Groups by John W. Thibaut (fellow 1956-57)

I read this book in the first graduate seminar I ever took. It is a timeless model of precise, careful theorizing.

Robb Willer (fellow 2012-2013, 2020-21)

Mind Design: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence by John Haugeland (fellow 1979-80), ed.

I read this book in the late 1990s while I was still in college. It compiles research on the workings of the human mind from leading scholars in philosophy, psychology, and artificial intelligence. The ideas presented, particularly the use of computational models to understand the human mind, were quite novel to me at the time and influenced my decision to pursue a career in the philosophy of cognitive science. Although the book is over 40 years old, much of its content needs updating, both in terms of theory and empirical evidence. However, in today's rapidly evolving AI landscape, many significant questions about the human mind remain not fully answered, and these deserve further exploration.

Tzu-wei Hung (2022-23)

The Sexual Contract by Carol Pateman (fellow 1984-85)

The Sexual Contract (1988), political philosopher Carol Pateman’s brilliant exploration of the social contract from the perspective of gender and patriarchy, provided critical insight for the project of undermining false universalism and reimagining rights. It remains a foundational work of feminist scholarship across the disciplines.

Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader by Gayle S. Rubin (fellow 2006-07, 2011-12)

This collection of essays, reflections, and field work reveals the power of Rubin’s germinal ideas and her deep grasp of history, anthropology, and social theory. These essays helped disentangled the complex relationships among sex, sexuality, gender, and power. Revisiting this body of scholarship now illuminates the genealogy of feminist, gender, and queer theory since the late twentieth century.

Estelle Freedman (fellow 2009-10, 2018-19)

Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty by Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting (fellow 1994-95)

A collection of papers edited by S. Engstrom and J. Whiting. I often go back to several pieces in it that laid the groundwork for subsequent research into the often-overlooked continuities between ancient and modern ethics (especially Kant’s).

Patricio Fernandez (fellow 2022-23)

Making Trouble by John d’Emilio (fellow 1990-91)

In Making Trouble, D'Emilio brings together essays on how gay rights are never guaranteed but result from a constant struggle to alter conservative ways of thinking. Published at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Emilio demonstrates that this struggle is as much the result of collective mobilization as it is of a process of subjectivation, that is, of self-criticism and self-transformation. By showing how the past can contribute to the present, he provides keys to understanding and resisting reactionary attacks on reproductive rights and sexual and emotional freedom in the United States today.

Bruno Perreau (fellow 2019-20)

Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy by Diana Carole Mutz (fellow 1999-00)

As I was writing my own Tyler collection book, Not Your Parents' Politics, I struggled with how to evaluate whether the kinds of youth online political expression we were examining had positive impacts on democracy. After deliberating on this for months, I remembered the argument made by Mutz in Hearing the Other Side. It shows how two different modes of political conversation have two very different outcomes: talking to those we agree with is conducive towards mobilization; while talking to those with differing views can increase tolerance, while at the same time having a demobilizing effect. This groundbreaking argument provided a theoretical breakthrough for me, as it did to our entire field.

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik (fellow 2021-22)

Primate Societies by Barbara Smuts (fellow 1983-84), Dorothy Cheney (fellow 1983-84), Robert Seyfarth (fellow 1983-84), Richard Wrangham (fellow 1983-84), and Thomas Struhsaker (1983-84), eds.

Without question, the most influential book of my college years (at least the latter ones). This is probably also where I first learned about CASBS, because it's mentioned in the preface. Primate Societies laid out not just the state of contemporary research (at the time) but, just as importantly for me, who the major players were. These were the people I would approach about doing a PhD. Of course, these individuals were all fellows in 1983-84. (Richard Wrangham ultimately became my PhD advisor.)

Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes by Irven DeVore (fellow 1962-63), ed.

Probably of equal importance for me in my intellectual journey was the OG work in primatology in this book. It literally defined primatology as a topic worthy of scholarly attention. It made the study of Primates a legitimate topic in and of itself, but also as an integral element of the study of human evolution. It laid the foundation for my advisor's generation of primatologists, who went on to edit Primate Societies at CASBS 20 years later in 1983-84.

The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture by Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides (fellow 1989-90), and John Tooby (fellow 1989-90), eds.

A third major work of key importance in my development is this 1992 volume. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby largely invented the field of evolutionary psychology in and around the time they were fellows. This book came out my first year of grad school and I took a seminar with John and Leda's advisor/mentor Irv DeVore (see above) that covered the book and the ideas that led to it. While it was never really my cup of tea, the impact on various cognate fields related to the study of behavior and evolution cannot be denied.

James Holland Jones (fellow 2015-16)

The Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius Wilson (fellow 1981-82)

I read this book soon after it came out during my first year as a PhD student in sociology in 1989. It anchored my understanding of the structural causes of the devastation many Black urban communities experienced in the 1980s. As good-paying industrial jobs declined, it pointed to the growing essential importance of education for the futures of urban youth and led me to commit my academic career to studying and working with community organizing groups building the power to transform public education, advance racial equity, and foster community liberation. I was honored to take residence in the same office Professor Wilson had occupied at CASBS during my fellowship year.

Mark Warren (fellow 2019-20)

The Sexual Contract by Carol Pateman (fellow 1984-85)

I read this book very late in my academic career, which probably supports the central argument of the book: there was something prior to the social contract that was not acknowledged or spoken about. In college we were told about Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke, but not about Pateman. This book is not an easy read, both because of its depth, and because of its implications. But it is enlightening in its view of topics that remain fundamental in contemporary societies, such as marriage, the nature of consent, prostitution or surrogacy.

Eva Anduiza (fellow 2018-19)

One Way Back: A Memoir by Christine Blasey Ford (fellow 2019-20)

A courageous account from someone thrust into the public eye who spoke truth to power.

Beth Van Schaack (fellow 2017-18)

Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights by Lauren Edelman (fellow 2003-04, 2005-06) 

This book, and Edelman’s contributions more generally, have had an indelible influence on countless scholars who work at the intersection of law and social science, and in my case, law and social psychology, and the interconnectedness between society, culture, and law. Her argument that we live not in a post-civil rights society but, instead, in a symbolic civil rights society (and, sadly, I would add, today, a symbolic human rights society) powerfully influenced and nurtured my thinking. She thoroughly demonstrates, with empirical evidence, the manner in which the meaning of law is shaped by widely accepted ideas within the social arena that the law seeks to regulate. In this book, Edelman takes the Equal Employment Opportunity Law to task for the way courts defer to business organizations’ symbolic structures of HR compliance with laws, often without reviewing the evidence supporting actual equal opportunity efforts in the workplace, and elaborates her profound idea of legal endogeneity.

Victor Quintanilla (fellow 2015-16)

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (fellow 1969-70)

This is a no-brainer. It’s quite simply the most important work of moral and political philosophy of the 20th century. Almost no one agrees with everything that Rawls says, but it is a timeless classic that all graduate students in the field have to read.

Ralph Wedgwood (fellow 2025-26)

How Physics Makes Us Free by Jenann T. Ismael (fellow 2014-15)

David Hume called free will the most contentious question of metaphysics. Ismael brings philosophical sensitivity to bear on that question, along with a unique dual expertise in both contemporary philosophy of mind and contemporary philosophy of physics. Her defense of free will is relentlessly insightful, exquisitely argued, largely convincing, and a pleasure to read.

The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett (fellow 1979-80)

This book captured my imagination and put me on the pathway to becoming the kind of philosopher I am today. It contains a wonderful mixture of mind-bending thought experiments, philosophical depth, incisive commentary, whimsical humor, and just plain fun. Its collection of essays, short stories, and commentaries is a perfect entry point for anyone who wants an introduction to the mysteries of minds, and the tools for thinking about them that lay at the heart of the cognitive sciences.

Dan Kelly (fellow 2018-19)

Beyond the Miracle of the Market by Robert H. Bates (fellow 1985-86, 1993-94)

I’m especially fond of this book. It's a masterclass in describing the political economy of a specific case while distilling the analysis down to the core issues. Though Bates focuses on rural Kenya, his main insight – that markets outcomes both shape and are shaped by political institutions – is one that resonates far beyond agrarian societies, and well beyond Africa.

Dynamics of Contention by Doug McAdam (fellow 1991-92, 1997-98) Sidney Tarrow (fellow 1980-81, 1997-98) and Charles Tilly (fellow in 1968-69, 1997-98)

I’m also very fond of this one by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly. The book clearly lays out, well, the dynamics of contention, drawing links between the French Revolution, Mau Mau in Kenya, and the disintegration of the USSR. More than two decades on, it remains timely: each reread offers fresh insight into our current era of surging protest, polarization, and institutional strain.

Mai Hassan (fellow 2019-20)

The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World by Alison Pugh (fellow 2016-17)

Alison Pugh’s superb book vividly brings to life the labour involved in connecting face to face at work. Drawing on extensive interviews, she shows how the very nature of work (in sectors such as education, healthcare, and therapy) relies on nurturing and sustaining relationships of trust. Yet, this humane work is being increasingly systemized – making it ripe for mechanization. I value this book as a direct challenge to the dominant discourse of Silicon Valley that envisages agentic AI models as substituting for sentient humans.

Judy Wajcman (fellow 2017-18)

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America by Margaret O’Mara (fellow 2014-15)

This was an essential book for me to read before I arrived at CASBS, which looks down upon the Valley whose transformation O’Mara documented so well. She provided new insight into the men and women behind the tech industry that transformed the Bay Area, the US, and the world.

Indebted: How Middle Class Families Make College Work at All Cost by Caitlin Zaloom (fellow 2016-17)

Indebted was and is such an important contribution to our understandings of the student debt crisis. Zaloom masterfully wields the tools of anthropology to really x-ray how these financial products have dramatically changed the calculations American middle-class families make in sending the next generation to college.

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (fellow 2019-20)

Working Law: Courts, Corporations and Symbolic Civil Rights by Lauren Edelman (fellow 2003-04, 2005-06)

This is my favorite Tyler Collection book in part because Edelman’s framework of legal endogeneity did change the course of law and organizations scholarship but also in part because as Laurie was writing the book (and even earlier when she was writing articles that cumulated into the book), I was interacting with her intellectually every step of the way. Her research and writing and mine in the socio-legal arena have been in constant dialogue. We always have been each other’s staunch supporters and incisive critics.  Indeed, we used to joke that the one piece we wrote together – a 2005 chapter on law and the economy for the Smelser, Swedberg Handbook of Economic Sociology should really be called “Why Laurie and Robin can both be right.”

Robin Stryker (fellow 2016-17)

The Black-White Test Score Gap by Christopher Jencks (fellow 1997-98, 2001-02) and Meredith Phillips, eds.

This book, by (the late) Sandy Jencks and (my departmental colleague) Meredith Phillips, is a model of social science excellence. It tackles a sensitive and challenging, but immensely important topic. It brings together a wide range of evidence and a clear-eyed willingness to follow that evidence wherever it leads. The book is exemplary social science that has inspired generations of scholars, myself included.

Martin Gilens (fellow 2015-16)

Social and Economic Networks by Matthew Jackson (fellow 2005-06)

This pairs with his more accessible The Human Network to present Matt's pioneering work introducing social networks into economic theory and analysis. It's full of valuable insights about the importance of network shape and centrality that I often think about in my own research.

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism by Oliver Williamson (fellow 1977-78)

Another classic in the field, emphasizing the importance of transaction costs and how institutions and hierarchies can be understood as means to mitigate the problems born from bounded rationality and opportunism. Oliver was a ghost in my study, along with the other progenitor of the New Institutional Economics, Doug North, and I often point him out to my students at the Stanford GSB, as he remains the only Stanford GSB MBA to go on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.

While Jackson and Williamson's work have the strong inter-disciplinary aspect for which CASBS is so justly celebrated, bringing in ideas from sociology and psychology into economics, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the top-most influential book for many on the shelf, even though it would be a bit of a stretch to say it was interdisciplinary:

Microeconomic Theory by Michael D. Whinston (fellow 1993-94) Jerry Green (fellow 1980-81) and Andreu Mas-Colell

I laughed when I saw it on the Tyler shelf. For generations, it has remained the textbook for first year PhD microeconomics classes, and a rite of passage for economics students. When I first met my now-wife, I lent her my copy that we keep at home today.

Saumitra Jha (fellow 2020-21)

Framed By Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World by Cecilia Ridgeway (fellow 2005-06, 2012-13)

Ridgeway shows how gender shapes the way we see and interact with one another in everyday life, often in ways we barely notice. Her work helps us understand why gender and other forms of inequality continue to persist, even when so many people truly believe in fairness and equality.

Christin Munsch (fellow 2022-23)

Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies by Paul Starr (fellow 2014-15)

This book examines how (American) politics is a struggle to bring about change that your opponent will find difficult to undo. It got me to thinking about how the process of entrenchment is valid not only for political processes but to economic, environmental, and technological change. I ended up writing a research proposal on exploring this idea across these fields.

Adel Daoud (fellow 2023-24)

Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics by Sidney G. Tarrow (fellow 1980-81, 1997-98)

Tarrow’s framework for how political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes interact has deeply shaped my thinking about the forces that contour public policy and governance. It has been especially illuminating for understanding the changes and dynamics in Hong Kong. Its comparative lens helps me situate politics and governance within a broader context, enriching my core research on how non-institutional and institutional power co-evolve to shape policy outcomes.

Wilson Wong (fellow 2022-23)

Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude Steele (fellow 1994-95)

Learning about Claude’s theory of stereotype threat as an undergraduate in the 1990s was what inspired me to pursue social psychology. The theory was elegant, powerful, and explanatory. It made me realize that there were researchers out there who were studying - with data! - what it felt like to have one’s racial group be seen through the lens of a stereotype and the negative consequences that such an experience could bring about, even if one did not at all believe the stereotype. The ideas in this book reveal the complex dance that results from being stereotyped and how much of a burden it can be in daily life.

Sapna Cheryan (fellow 2016-17)

Philosophy and the State in France by Nannerl O. Keohane (fellow 1978-79, 1987-88, 2004-05)

In Philosophy and the State in France, Nannerl O. Keohane analyzes how French political philosophers from Bodin and Montaigne to Montesquieu and Rousseau sought to combine an appreciation of the importance of individuals with a vision of a community based on common interests. She shows how these thinkers sought to articulate how a substantial public life could be created in a polity that protected both individuality and privacy.

Robert Keohane (fellow 1978-79, 1987-88, 2004-05)

Ants at Work by Deborah Gordon (fellow 1997-98, 2001-02, 2009-10)

The amazing industriousness of ants and their organized activities as a community have captured the fascination of naturalists and admiration of philosophers since classical antiquity. Modern scientists have studied ants’ behavior to try to understand how their colonies actually work and the roles of individual ants. But Deborah Gordon is the first biologist to crack the codes embedded in the complex collective behavior of ant colonies through their individual interactions, especially in response to water stress. Contrary to what was previously assumed, ants are not programmed for a single task but pursue different tasks as needed. Gordon’s work is inspiring in terms of understanding how natural systems function without central control, through regulating individual participants’ responses to information relayed by encounters with other ants. Her work provides crucial analogies for AI, climate change, and human collective action.

Adrienne Mayor (fellow 2018-19)

The Remembered Village by M.N. Srinivas (fellow 1964-65, 1969-70)

This book stands as one of the most important landmarks in Indian sociology, for it overturned the textbook image of caste as rigid and timeless, replacing it with a vivid account of the everyday experience of caste uncovered through empirical fieldwork. By advancing concepts such as dominant caste and Sanskritization, Srinivas revealed caste not as a fixed hierarchy but as a flexible, evolving system shaped by power, politics, and mobility. This reorientation from abstract theory to lived practice deeply reshaped subsequent sociological debates and firmly established caste as a dynamic social process.

Jules Naudet (fellow 2021-22)
(Editor's note: Watch Jules discuss The Remembered Village in this CASBS video.)

Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa by Robert H. Bates (fellow 1985-86, 1993-94)

Robert Bates’ Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa (1983) may feel light in your hand – clocking in at just under 150 pages – but it had a heavy impact on how Africa would soon be studied by social scientists. Across five elegant chapters, Bates sets aside cultural essentialism for the more universal models of rational choice. His message is simple: people are people, everywhere, and institutions and the incentives that they create shape economic and political life just as much in stateless “traditional” societies as in the “advanced” economies of the West. From this kernel grew a widely influential approach to the political economy of development.

Noah Nathan (fellow 2019-20)

Orientalism5 by Edward Said (fellow 1975-76)

Edward Said's Orientalism has especially influenced me (and entire generations of students and scholars). Orientalism spotlighted how so much European writing about Arab and Muslim peoples stemmed from assumptions of Western difference and superiority and was produced in service of colonial domination. Once I had read it as a college student in the 1990s, I could see Orientalist ideas everywhere, from eighteenth century English romantic poetry to ideological claims postulating a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. Nearly fifty years after its publication, the book seems as relevant to understanding the cultural stereotypes of violence, despotism, and the oppression of women that still characterize Western depictions of the Middle East and that still serve to justify U.S. military incursions and projections of power in the region.

Shirin Sinnar (fellow 2024-25)

Observational Studies by Paul Rosenbaum (fellow 2000-01)

This book taught me about the power of testing-based randomization-based statistical inference and has really shaped my entire career as a methodologist since I studied it right after starting my first job as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. Chapter 2 alone deserves much study – it re-explains the Fisher's classic,"Lady Tasting Tea" example from 1935 in the context of modern approaches to causal inference and provides foundational statistical theory about the guarantees that randomization provides for such hypothesis tests. He also describes formal sensitivity analysis and a way to understand binary outcomes without requiring logistic regression models. Reading this book opened my eyes and mind to an entirely new and useful way to think about statistics and the social sciences. 

Jacob Bowers (fellow 2018-19)

Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology by Adrienne Mayor (fellow 2018-19)

As a Greek-born scholar of modern artificial intelligence, reading Adrienne Mayor’s book resonates deeply with me because it bridges the technological realities I study today with the myths of my own cultural ancestry. In these ancient stories — Talos, Pandora, the living creations of Hephaestus—I see the earliest formulations of the very ethical and philosophical questions my field still struggles with. Mayor reminds me that our current machines are not only scientific achievements but also inherit a lineage of imagination, desire, and caution that stretches back millennia. This connection between myth and modernity feels both personal and profoundly illuminating.

Angela Aristidou (fellow 2022-23)

Institutions and Organizations by W. Richard Scott (fellow 1989-90)

Dick Scott is the sage of the field of organization theory — he wrote the canonical textbook that all doctoral students read when they are learning the canon and need to study for prelims. Institutions and organizations was a brilliant synthesis of an increasingly unruly set of conversations about how institutions shape organizations. It created order and space for more productive dialogue that continues to influence the field to this day.

Organizations and Nation States: New Perspectives on Conflict and Cooperation by Robert Louis Kahn (fellow 1986-87, 1994-95) and Mayer N. Zald (fellow 1986-87, 1993-94, 2004-05)

A sentimental favorite. During the last phase of the cold war in 1986-87, Bob Kahn and Mayer Zald convened a diverse group of CASBS fellows, Stanford faculty, and me — a 2nd-year grad students — to explore how research on organizations might inform strategies for international cooperation, particularly between the US and the USSR. The thinking was that we have millions of organizations that compete and cooperate, and we might learn something from their successes and failures for nation-states. I am happy to report that since this book was published, there have been no US/USSR wars.

Jerry Davis (fellow 1997-98, 2020-21)

The Remembered Village by M.N. Srinivas (fellow 1964-65, 1969-70)

Although I’m not an anthropologist, in working about online politics in India, this classic ethnography of caste and kinship in a small village in the late 1940s still illuminates how to understand contemporary Indian social life. It also shows the power of fieldwork and a bottom-up perspective. And the story of how it was written at CASBS is an amazing tale itself.

Ralph Schroeder (fellow 2023-24)

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (fellow 1969-70)

This book is the only 20th-century work of political theory that stands with the classics, from Plato and Aristotle to Marx and JS Mill. It has been tremendously influential for all of modern political thought, a key reference point for almost every practitioner. Rawls wrote it in the CASBS study where I checked in a decade later, and for the first few weeks I was almost paralyzed by the thought of his presence, but then it became an inspiration.

After Hegemony by Robert O. Keohane (fellow 1977-78, 1987-88, 2004-05)

This book is one of the foundation stones for international relations theorists today, providing key precepts that are still crucial to the field. Teaching us that cooperation is prompted by conflict, not harmony, and that institutions are essential to our international order, the messages are especially pertinent in this troubled time.

Nannerl Keohane (fellow 1978-88, 1987-88, 2004-05)

The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis by Walter W. Powell (fellow 1986-87, 2008-09) and Paul DiMaggio (fellow 1984-85)

Early in grad school, the image of institutions and institutional power developed in the introduction, and across the volume's essays, equipped me with an incredibly valuable and generative way of understanding the contemporary press and digital journalism as "loosely coupled arrays of standardized elements" (a phrase I memorized and often repeat to my students!). I can't imagine my research program, teaching, and public intellectual work without the institutional story offered by this deeply insightful volume. I'm grateful for its charge and clarity.

Mike Ananny (fellow 2018-19)

Indebted: How Middle Class Families Make College Work at All Cost by Caitlin Zaloom (fellow 2016-17)

Caitlin Zaloom’s groundbreaking book is a rare and much needed portrayal of how families navigate the intricate student finance complex and unassailable conviction that there can be no price tag on investing in the potential of one’s children. With clarity and empathy, Zaloom reveals the moral dilemmas and tough choices of young Americans and their parents taking on college debt, as she also delivers a powerful call to envision higher education less as an individual family responsibility and more as a common good.

Nina Bandelj (fellow 2019-20)

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution by David Brion Davis (fellow 1972-73)

Perhaps the most field-changing book in intellectual history in the Tyler collection is the second in David Brion Davis’s four-volume history of the transformation of slavery from a fact of normal life to a moral problem in Western culture. The book was shaped by a year of intense discussions at CASBS with one of the history profession’s most outspoken Marxists, Eugene Genovose, whose absorption with the social strategies of power played off against Davis’s grounding in philosophy and ideas. The result was an intellectual history almost unmatched for its depth, subtlety, and attention to the hidden social faces of abstract thought.

Daniel Rodgers (fellow 1991-92, 2015-16)

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (fellow 1969-70) 

Rawls is one of the giants of political philosophy. I first came across Rawls' book while still an undergraduate, and was so impressed by it that I ended up writing my final thesis on the application of Rawls' theory of justice to international environmental regimes and negotiations. The rigor, elegance and progressive implications of Rawls' theory have stayed with me and informed my work on economic justice ever since.

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman (fellow 1968-69)

For those interested in institutions, governance, and accountability, like me, Hirschman's short but hugely influential book remains a fundamental reference for thinking about the mechanisms that allow people to respond to the declining performance of companies and states, and about the ways in which change can happen. I have used it repeatedly ever since I first read it during my graduate studies, and go back to it regularly today.

In fact, when selecting the study for my fellowship in 2021, I had the two rooms that had been Rawls' and Hirschman's on my list, and was lucky enough to get the room where the ghost of John Rawls inspired me throughout the fellowship year!

Paolo de Renzio (fellow 2021-22)

A History of Communication Study: a Biographical Approach by Everett M. Rogers (fellow 1991-92)

In my first couple months at CASBS, I went to order a copy of this book from the Stanford Libraries. I was delighted to find out that it was already on the CASBS campus because it was in the Tyler Collection! Each autumn, I assign excerpts of that book to incoming PhD students in the Department of Communication to help orient them in the field of communication and I'll always think of CASBS when I read it. Finding out that a book that I wanted just happened to be written in a nearby study was one of those moments when I felt the intellectual gravity of the Center.

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Abert Hirschman (fellow 1968-69)

The "famous" book in the collection that's most important to me. It is obviously among the more important books in the social sciences published in the twentieth century. I have taught graduate seminars on it repeatedly and, in some ways, it has made the research that I do possible in the first place.

Benjamin Mako Hill (fellow 2018-19)

Political Man: the Social Bases of Politics by Seymour Martin Lipset (fellow 1955-56, 1972-73)

I appreciate it for its prescience in predicting the return of the politics of group exclusion and insight into the formation of political preferences under the pressure of crossed identities.

Mark Kayser (fellow 2018-19)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (fellow 1958-59)

Written just after finishing graduate school and in the first years of CASBS, the book not only transformed the entire field of the history and sociology of science, but spilled over into the ways in which social scientists now think about progress in their areas of specialization.

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (fellow 1969-70)

Perhaps the most influential book ever written in the field of moral philosophy. Its impact on law, political science, philosophy and any number of other fields of study has been enormous.

The Evolution of Cooperation by David Axelrod (fellow 1976-77, 1981-82)   

Not as widely known or cited as either Kuhn or Rawls, but a classic that has had a major impact in law, political science, philosophy and evolutionary studies.

Reciprocity by Lawrence Becker (fellow 1983-84) 

I mention this one because Larry was perhaps the most unusual, interesting , lovable and admirable fellow I know. A philosophy professor, Larry was also severely disabled by childhood polio, leaving his arms and hands basically useless. He would arrive at the Center each day, make his way to his study with the help of an aide, and then I, or another member of our staff, would help him set up to write. To write, we would take off his shoe and sock, place an ordinary lead pencil between his big and second toe, place a yellow writing pad next to his chair and leave him to it. What he produced is one of the most interesting and deeply personal books ever written about the philosophical foundations and justifications for reciprocity in social life. A genuine one of a kind.

A Home for the Heart by Bruno Bettelheim (fellow 1971-72)

A pioneering work on child development, hugely influential in the field of child development.

Exchange and Power in Social Life by Peter Blau (fellow 1962-63)

This book laid the foundations for exchange theory in sociology and political science.

The Shape of the River by William Bowen (visiting scholar 1979-80) and Derrick Bok (fellow 1991-92)

In my view, this is the best single argument and justification for affirmative action that exists.

Attachment and Loss by John Bowlby (fellow 1957-58)

A foundational work that led to the study of attachment in child psychology and psychiatry.

Natural Allies: Women’s Association in American History by Anne Scott (fellow 1986-87)

Anne Scott is perhaps the single most important figure in the field of history to call attention to the role that women played in establishing the field of women’s studies, not only in the discipline of history, but in every social science discipline, and in all of the humanities. This book details, chapter and verse, the role women played in civilizing the American West through establishing schools, libraries, museums, civic associations, churches, and social service agencies of every kind. As important in her field as Kuhn and Rawls are in theirs. Plus, her daughter Rebecca later became a fellow and very distinguished scholar in her field of history while holding a named chair in history at the University of Michigan.

Bob Scott (CASBS associate director, 1983-2001, 2009-10)

Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers and Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers by Richard Rorty (fellow 1982-83)

It’s hard to single out just one but Richard Rorty’s Philosophical Papers had an enormous impact on political philosophy in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Probably more people disagreed with the content than agreed with it, but it set out a case for what’s now called post-modernism or antifoundationalism so clearly and cogently that it could not be ignored.

Joshua Dienstag (fellow 2014-15)

Microeconomic Theory by Andreu Mas-Colell, Michael D. Whinston (fellow 1993-94), and Jerry R. Green (fellow 1980-81)

This was not expected. It is a basic education-training book. Very popular, just not the kind of book I had expected and yet it reaches millions of students.

Valentina Bosetti (fellow 2014-15)

On the Road of the Winds: Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Colonization by Patrick Kirch (fellow 1997-98)

It is the foremost book written about the ancient societies of the Pacific and has been important in my thinking about the archaeology of western North America.

Kent Lightfoot (fellow 2014-15)

 

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