Little fascinates New Yorkers more than doormen, who know far more about tenants than tenants know about them. Doormen know what their tenants eat, what kind of movies they watch, whom they spend time with, whether they drink too much, and whether they have kinky sex. But if doormen are unusually familiar with their tenants, they are also socially very distant. In Doormen, Peter Bearman untangles this unusual dynamic to reveal the many ways that tenants and doormen negotiate their complex relationship. Combining observation, interviews, and survey information, Doormen provides a deep and enduring ethnography of the occupational role of doormen, the dynamics of the residential lobby, and the mundane features of highly consequential social exchanges between doormen and tenants. Here, Bearman explains why doormen find their jobs both boring and stressful, why tenants feel anxious about how much of a Christmas bonus their neighbors give, and how everyday transactions small and large affect tenants' professional and informal relationships with doormen. In the daily life of the doorman resides the profound, and this book provides a brilliant account of how tenants and doormen interact within the complex world of the lobby.

I was once part of a notorious group that visited football grounds around Britain. Meeting with the opposition fans for—well, let’s just say it wasn’t to share stories over a cup of tea and biscuits! I was also a very well-known doorman working the rave and city centre nightclubs. I have compiled some interesting scenarios that we encounter during our lives, and I will try to offer some help and advice, to anyone who is willing to listen. You’re in a situation where running is out the question and the only means of survival is to fight for your life. This is the situation you’ve been eagerly waiting for; how will you react? Will you stand and battle, which could result in a loss of life, or will you run and risk serious retribution? Whatever decision you make, represents the passing or failing of life’s Ten-Metre Walk. This is the distance between battle and bottle. It also represents the fight-or-flight syndrome, or a possible flatline in the local hospital. The situation faced is met by many doormen as well. “Shall we sort these lads out, or do we let them take the piss?” Either scenario is met with the Ten-Metre Walk. How will you make yours?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A raucous, whip-smart collection of stories featuring retro-feminist ladies who lunch.” —Elle Meet the women of American Housewife. They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it’s cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies from the oven. Taking us from a haunted pre-war Manhattan apartment building to the unique initiation ritual of a book club, these twelve delightfully demented stories are a refreshing and wicked answer to the question: “What do housewives do all day?”

As a young boy riding in his father's taxi, Bernard Montpeirous never imagined the adventures that awaited him in the streets (and doorways) of New York City. In his engaging memoir, he recounts his childhood experiences as a first-generation Haitian American and shares highlights of his career as a doorman for two of the city's luxury hotels. While on the job, Montpeirous met some of the biggest stars of all time and bore witness to what they were like when the cameras were gone. From Sylvester Stallone to Mick Jagger, Montpeirous's clients partied hard and were often happy to let the doorman in on the fun. The Revolving Door, however, isn't all about the high life. Montpeirous also focuses on the moments that forced him to grow and change. As a young man, he was up for almost anything, but Montpeirous now has learned the importance of family and fatherhood and has confronted the demons he ran from for half his life. In The Revolving Door, Montpeirous shares entertaining anecdotes about hobnobbing with celebrities as well as insightful advice on facing up to your shortcomings. You won't soon forget the tremendous highs and the terrifying lows of his life's journey.

Arenas's first work set in the United States breaks new ground with the story of a young Cuban refugee who becomes a doorman at a luxury apartment building. Oddly alienated from the tenants, he is seduced by their pets, who are determined to revolt against humans and human society.

On every planet there is a door that can take you anywhere in thegalaxy. Henry Clay Waters is the Doorman for Earth - and he's one day fromretirement. So why is he suddenly the target of Intergalactic assassins? Canspunky alien cop, Detective Flower, keep him alive long enough to find out? It'sa cosmic comic caper full of space Koalas, monsters, exploding heads, andegomaniacal extraterrestrial gazillionaires, as two working-class heroes try tosave The Universe in The Doorman! Reprints The Doorman #1-4, and includes 14pages of bonus material!

This book is part of a quest for a general theory of organizations valid in all cultures. Central to Frank Salter's investigation is the question of social power: why people obey their superiors. His approach is to locate the nature of organizational power in the behavioral details of hierarchical interactions in the institutional settings in which they occur. Salter begins by noting the extensive research that points to hierarchy as being a necessary component of organization and proceeds to an analysis rendered in universals of primary emotions and behaviors of dominance and affiliation. The first five chapters are theoretical, the last seven empirical. He reviews the social science literature showing the place of ethological methods and concepts, then aspects of the evolution and physiology of dominance and affiliation. Salter then introduces the emotional underpinnings of dominance and affiliation, and applies these concepts in a summary of the literature on interpersonal signaling. He describes the methods used, drawing parallels with classical ethology, anthropology, and sociology. The empirical section begins with a short chapter examining the simple commands given in a military parade. Chapter 7 analyses nightclub doormen's use of dominance in dealing with troublesome patrons. Chapter 8 describes the giving and receiving of commands in artistic rehearsals, and finds generally soft, appeased commands. Chapters 9 and 10 analyze courts and meetings respectively, finding both blunt and softened commands. Chapter 11 reports preliminary observations of command in general government bureaucracy, a setting which combines many organizational techniques in a highly articulated infrastructure. The concluding chapter summarizes the data and adopts a comparative method in searching for relationships between structural variables of institutional dominance and behavioral variables of command aggression, subordinate submission and resistance, and task characteristics. Provocative and well written, Emotions in Command will appeal to students and researchers in sociology, anthropology, and social and organizational-industrial psychology. Frank Kemp Salter is an Australian political scientist who has been a researcher with the Max Planck Society, Andechs, Germany since 1991 and is author of On Genetic Interests which is published by Transaction.

Urban ethnography is the firsthand study of city life by investigators who immerse themselves in the worlds of the people about whom they write. Since its inception in the early twentieth century, this great tradition has helped define how we think about cities and city dwellers. The past few decades have seen an extraordinary revival in the field, as scholars and the public at large grapple with the increasingly complex and pressing issues that affect the ever-changing American city-from poverty to the immigrant experience, the changing nature of social bonds to mass incarceration, hyper-segregation to gentrification. As both a method of research and a form of literature, urban ethnography has seen a notable and important resurgence. This renewed interest demands a clear and comprehensive understanding of the history and development of the field to which this volume contributes by presenting a selection of past and present contributions to American urban ethnographic writing. Beginning with an original introduction highlighting the origins, practices, and significance of the field, editors Mitchell Duneier, Philip Kasinitz, and Alexandra Murphy guide the reader through the major and fascinating topics on which it has focused -- from the community, public spaces, family, education, work, and recreation, to social policy, and the relationship between ethnographers and their subjects. An indispensable guide, The Urban Ethnography Reader provides an overview of how the discipline has grown and developed while offering students and scholars a selection of some of the finest social scientific writing on the life of the modern city.

Includes over two hundred plates illustrating the police at work and early police stations.

"Fascinating . . . Poignant." The Wall Street Journal In this extraordinary work of insight and interviews, bestselling author Gay Talese shares with us the lives of those we don't know and those we might wish we did: Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, Manhattan mobsters, Bowery bums, and many others -- fascinating men and women who define our country's spirit and lead us to an understanding of ourselves as a nation.