George Ritzeris Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has also been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence Award. He was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association, an honorary doctorate from LaTrobe University in Australia, and the Robin Williams Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. His best-known work, The McDonaldization of Society (8th ed.), has been read by hundreds of thousands of students over two decades and translated into over a dozen languages. Ritzer is also the editor of McDonaldization: The Reader; and author of other works of critical sociology related to the McDonaldization thesis, includingEnchanting a Disenchanted World, The Globalization of Nothing, Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, as well as a series best-selling social theory textbooks and Globalization: A Basic Text. He is the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2 vols.), the Encyclopedia of Sociology (11 vols.; 2nd edition forthcoming), theEncyclopedia of Globalization(5 vols.

), and is Founding Editor of theJournal of Consumer Culture. In 2016 he will publish the second edition of Essentials of Sociologywith SAGE. Kimberly J. McGann (Ph.D., SUNY-Buffalo) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., where she regularly teaches introduction to sociology, marriage and families, race and ethnicity, and mass media and popular culture.