Richard Sennett is one of the world's leading sociologists & this book first published in 1970 was his first single-authored work. It launched his exploration of communities & how they live in cities & outlined his view that order breeds narrow violence-prone lives while an 'equilibrium of disorder' brings vigour & diversity to urban life. The New York Times" described it as 'the best available contemporary defence of anarchism'. " The Uses of Disorder" followed the student & urban rebellions of the late 1960s. But it remains uncannily apposite to the problems of city life forty years on. In a new preface Sennett considers the response to the book over those years & relates it to the circumstances faced by the inhabitants of cities in the twenty-first century. The body of the text remains unchanged ready for a new generation of readers."