The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community's Battle over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights; Or, How the Right Divides Us

Winner of the Ruth Benedict Prize

The story of a small town’s fight over LGBTQ+ rights that reveals how the far right weaponizes social issues to declare whose lives are valuable—and whose are expendable

A new preface bridges the past and the present in Arlene Stein’s award-winning work of narrative sociology, The Stranger Next Door, contextualizing the so-called “culture wars” as they have evolved since the post-Reagan years. With deep on-the-ground research and vivid storytelling, Stein exp...