If a neo-conservative, as Irving Kristol put it, is a liberal who has been mugged by reality, James Jasper is simply a sociologist who has been mugged. "I had only lived in New York a week when I was mugged - in Times Square no less, in the middle of the day, with crowds of people all around," reads his opening sentence.

While most other mugging victims might take the incident as proof that we live in a malign and unjust universe, Jasper uses his experience to draw some interesting conclusions about the nature of strategic action. "Often, by the time you realise someone has begun to interact with you in a strategic fashion, it is too late to do much about it," he writes. "Sometimes, you have al-ready lost." He may have been accosted at noon, but Jasper understands what dawn raids are all about.