Five years after launching his bestseller, Essential Sociology, 2015-batch IAS officer, Nitin Sangwan, has come up with the second edition of the book. Scheduled for a launch in February, the book will be a boon for UPSC aspirants, especially who has opted for Sociology as their optional subject. One new thing about this latest edition is that it will help even all those students preparing for other competitive exams as well.
Indian Masterminds spoke to the author, Mr. Nitin Sangwan, to get the key features of this new edition, and in the process, got to know important details about the first edition that was a hit among UPSC aspirants and was also the bestseller in Sociology.
FROM BLOG TO WRITING BOOK
Mr. Nitin Sangwan, who cleared the UPSC exam in 2015, said, “While I was preparing for the UPSC exam, I used to make notes in my computer and then learn it. During that time, I had notes of the entire syllabus of around two to three subjects including Sociology. I used to run a blog where I had uploaded all these notes. After clearing the UPSC exam, a publication by the name of Lexis Nexis approached me and asked me to turn these notes into a book. As the notes were uploaded on the blog, they went through it and found value in it.”
However, he added that he was not so sure about the notes of the other subjects except Sociology, a subject he was very confident in. Hence, heeding the advice of the publication, he published a book on it in 2016, calling it, Essential Sociology.
The book became an instant hit among aspirants as it was for the very first time that a standard book on Sociology was published. Gradually the book reached the top among the Sociology section and is currently the bestseller.
INCORPORATING CHANGES
The first edition of Essential Sociology was also the first attempt of the officer in writing a book. He received a lot of feedback and messages after the book was published. The feedback was from the aspirants and their experience while studying it. Mr. Sangwan said, “I tried to incorporate all the feedback into the second edition and make it easy for the students to understand. Many aspirants who could not afford coaching classes for the exam had requested me to add things like, model standard answers where they can practice answer writing for the mains exam. As the book was divided into two parts, students had also requested me to improve on the second part as they were finding it difficult to understand.”
The second edition of Essential Sociology covers every aspect of the subject in a very comprehensive manner and has some new features, either changed or improved from the earlier version of the book.
The book will now cater to the needs of not only UPSC Civil Services aspirants, but NET aspirants and undergraduate students also. The language has been further simplified in this edition. Divided into two parts, the book covers Indian sociological thought in great detail with a contemporary touch.
NEW ADDITIONS
Some of the new additions in the book includes more than 50 solved model questions which shall be particularly helpful for Civil Services Exam aspirants and college and university students, 750+ new definitions in the book added as glossary for clear comprehension of the subject, up-to date statistics and figures till 2022 for providing the readers a contemporary perspective, highlighting of key terms in the book so that the reader doesn’t miss important concepts, and more than 100 pages worth of new content.
