State of Sociology This article is being lauded by the usual suspects. IMO it is a failure because it fails to recognize that sociology is producing much great research. Here are four examples of great books by sociologists published in 2025/2026 that rival those of any social scientists. For inequality, here are two books which I rank among the most important I have read in the last several years. Neither, IMO could have been written by an economist. The natural kinds undergirding their logic, the ways that evidence is evaluated, are essential complements to the ways that economists, including me, normally think. 1. Aaron Reeves @aaronsreeves and Sam Friedman @SamFriedmanSoc , Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite is a tour de force in analyzing the ways that British elites have reproduced themselves since the 1890s, finding relatively little changes in the rates of elite reproduction during this period. The book characterizes the ways that elites have evolved in the ways that they conceptualize themselves and present themselves to others. As such, Reeves and Friedman provide deep insights into the nature of intergenerational mobility and of meritocracy for Great Britain, past and present. All of this is done using an amazing array of qualitative and quantitative information that the authors constructed. 2. Michelle Jackson @mivich, The Division of Rationalized Labor is a remarkable analysis of the nature of modern jobs. The book argues that contrary to the classical idea that increasing division of labor would leads to job simplification, the modern economy has produced jobs of increasing complexity as a given position involves more complex and heterogeneous objectives. Teachers are one example that is discussed in detail. Michelle argues that rationalization of the economy facilitated by increased capacity to understand and measure how productivity of individuals and organizations is determined, underlies this evolution. This vision contains deep implications for labor market and intergenerational inequality. Methodology. These two books stand on par with the best econometrics texts. 3. Cristobal Young and Erin Cumberworth, Multiverse Analysis: Computational Methods for Robust Results defines an important frontier in the analysis of the effects of model assumptions on empirical claims, by constructing ways to communicate information about objects of interest across model spaces, which define different portfolios of assumptions. This vision of empirics is the next generation after model averaging, which has been important in the economic growth literature. 4. Geoffrey Wodtke and Xiang Zhou, Causal Mediation Analysis is a masterful synthesis and will become a standard citation and the essential reference for students and researchers. To be clear, my objection to the WSJ article and the way it is being is fully consistent with my endorsement of the Vanderbilt-Washington report. The fact that I know world class sociologists who have dropped their memberships in the American Sociological Association over its politicization (while many others have expressed misgivings to me) speaks volumes. But the idea that the field is a systematic failure is nonsense.