Rating:  -
The Publishers Weekly review is spot on. Half-baked quasi-thoughts from the discipline's yeasteryear, combined with troublingly absurd prognostications, won't do much to satisfy sociologists or introduce you to the discipline. The mediocre plot summaries are buttressed by more detail about the show's 186 episodes than PW admits, and about which Delaney clearly knows a great deal, but there's not enough new or interpretative to do much for Seinfeld fans. The combined weaknesses will simply frustrate anyone who is BOTH a sociologist AND a Seinfeld fan.
If you want to be the master of your domain, either disciplinarily or zeitgeistian, you'd do as well (nay, better) to find plot summaries online, open to a random page in any Sociology textbook, and discover or invent connections on your own. It'd be cheaper, more fun, more social, and (since Delaney's Sociology is somewhat shallow, and his Seinology sometimes overbearing) more educational.
I suspect that the book will sell well as a function of its title, despite the arguable poverty of its content. Maybe Delaney's snickering like Neuman, or maybe he's as incomplete as Kramer. But if you fancy yourself as having a fraction of Jerry's clarity, perception, and/or frugality, keep on shopping - IMHO, this isn't it.
OTOH, if you crave for more of a show eight years passed its cancellation (and the outtakes on DVD releases simply aren't enough) and/of if you don't know anything Sociology and want to pretend that you do without actually learning much about it, there are clearly those (see other reviews, here and elsewhere) who've found value in this volume - not that there's anything wrong with that, just that there's not clearly something right about it, either.
Rating:  -
To be fair, I didn't actually read the entire book. I just skimmed through a couple of pages in the bookstore. However, there didn't seem to be much sociological or scientific content at all. The author would write 2 sentences stating something obvious (such as that people frequently break the law) then spend the next 2 pages recounting episode summaries of Seinfeld (there was the one where Newman has traffic tickets, and the one where...).
Save your money and buy an actual book about sociology, or an actual Seinfeld DVD. Either would be more entertaining and enlightening than this book.
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