Erving Manuel Goffman

"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. Many works have examined Goffman's theoretical contributions, but no full biography as this richly-sourced volume provides."

-- 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. The author, Dmitri Shalin, and his knowledge of the content of the Goffman Archive makes him the most suited scholar to write this book. The book is an interesting and illuminating read and reveals some new sides to and insights about Goffman's life and work heretofore unknown or uncovered. 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)