"When the most distinguished empirical social researcher in Britain takes on the problem of the relation between theory and research, places the issues in their larger historical setting (based on wide and accurate reading in the historical literature), and also states the issue in current technical terms, and does so with both panache and bite, we get a book that is well worth reading."--American Journal of Sociology
"Goldthorpe's project has all the scope and reach of the post-war functionalist program of Parsons and Merton, but it is likely to be more successful precisely because it allows a substantial role for empirical scholarship and can contain and encompass the ongoing quantitative revolution. . . . The publication of On Sociology will come to be seen as a turning-point in the history of the discipline."--European Sociological Review

John H. Goldthorpe is an Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Academia Europaea, and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.