This book is a welcome compilation of short but thoughtful pieces penned by a prominent sociologist, Dr Collin Abraham, over the years. Although the compilation itself as a whole does not represent an attempt at social scientific grand theorizing on the state of the Malaysian society and nation, but each and everyone of the pieces, separately and as a whole, to me constitutes a clear indication of the writer’s concerns over issues of everyday manifestations of social life in Malaysia-covering diverse subjects ranging from business and economic structures to the hardship of ordinary working men such as the poor Malaysian Indian estate workers. What I find to be most moving and intellectually satisfying from reading pieces is not simply the fact that they emanate from the genuine concerns of a well-meaning social observer but the fact that they are rooted in the empathic observations of a true concerned social scientist who has gone through the rigorous “training” of a social welfare officer and as an academic social activist. In this compilation the reader can expect to benefit not only from the keen empirical observations of a methodologically rigorous professional social scientist, but also one who presents his explanation elegantly in a format informed by what the American sociologist C. Wright Mills has described as “the sociological imagination”-an ingredient one sometimes misses in similar genre overly dominated methodological and scientific rigour these days Rustam A. Sani (submitted three days before his demise).