Erving Manuel Goffman Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination

"For the balance of its analyses of Goffman's life and work, for its accuracy, for the panorama it offers of American academic life in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and, last but not least, for its clear and elegant writing, the volume represents a fundamental contribution to Goffmanian studies, recommended both to those approaching Goffman for the first time and to his most devoted followers."

Pier Paolo Giglioli, Professor at the University of Bologna and editor of Etnografia e ricerca qualitative

"Scholars have long waited for an extended account of the life and career of the important Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman. It is truly said of Goffman that he was the most influential North American sociologist of the 20th century. Such a volume will make an invaluable contribution to the history of the social sciences."

Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University

"This book is ambitious, important, and a landmark work of biography."

Gary D. Jaworski, Professor of Sociology, Fairleigh Dickinson University

"This is an important volume on one of the major 20th-century social theorists, Erving Goffman. There continues to be a strong undercurrent in sociology that goes back to the work of Erving Goffman, and although it is now more than 40 years since his premature demise, this undercurrent is as strong and powerful as at any other point in time. This book shows us why!"

Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Professor of Sociology, Aalborg University, co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies (2024) and editor of The Contemporary Goffman (2012)

"A beautifully written, deeply informative, wise, and appreciative, yet critical, study of one of the 20th century's most significant social thinkers. The study reflects the inimitable Shalin's decades of research (including founding the invaluable Erving Goffman Archives) and is among the best social science biographies in English ever done. Necessary reading for understanding Goffman's central ideas and their antecedents and contexts!"

Gary T. Marx, author of Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology

"It is about time a comprehensive biography of Erving Goffman was written. Erving Manuel Goffman weaves together the Erving Goffman Archives with Shalin's (re)analysis of key texts to produce a cradle-to-grave profile."

Colin Jerolmack, Symbolic Interaction