No one has written with more verve and authority about the awesome and frightening capabilities of man than the late C. Wright Mills, a prominent and controversial sociologist who wrote such memorable tomes as "White Collar", an exploration of the emerging American Middle class in the early 1950s, and The Power Elite", a provocative examination of the nature of power, privilege, and status in the United States, and how each of these three critical elements of power and property in this country are irrevocably connected to each other. At last look, both books were still in print and are still used in both undergraduate and graduate sociology courses throughout the world. After fifty years, that in and of itself is powerful testimony to his enduring value as a scholar and an original thinker.

Here Mills focuses memorably on the qualities and uses of the sociological perspective in modern life, how such a scientifically based way of looking at, interpreting, and interacting with the larger world invests its user with a better, more accurate, and quite instrumental picture of what is happening meaningfully around him. For Mills, the key to understanding the value in such a perspective is in appreciating that one can only understand the motives, behavior, and actions of others by locating them within a wider and more meaningful context that connects their personal biographies with the large social circumstances that surround, direct, and propel them at any given historical moment. For Mills, for example, trying to understand the reasoning behind the sometimes desperate actions of Jews in Nazi Germany without appreciating the horrifyingly unique existential circumstances they found themselves in is hopelessly anachronistic and limited.

On the other hand, one invested with such an appreciation for how biography and history interact to create the meaningful social circumstances of any situation finds himself better able to understand the fact that when in a country of one hundred million employed, one man's singular lack of employment might be due to his persoanl deficiencies or lack of a work ethic, and be laid at his feet as a personal trouble, it is also true that when twenty million individuals out of that one hundred million figure suddenly find themselves so disposed and unemployed, that situation is due to something beyond the control of those many individuals and is best described in socioeconomic terms as a social problem to be laid at the feet of the government and industry to resolve. To Mills, it is critical to understand the inherant differences between personal troubles on the one hand, which an individual has the responsibity to resolve and overcome, and social ills, which are beyond both his ken or control. Indeed, according to Mills, increasingly in the 20th century one finds himself trapped by social circumstance into dilemmas he is absolutely unable to resolve without significant help from the wider social community.

Thus, for both psychological as well as social reasons, a person using the sociological perspective, or invested with what he called the "sociological imagination", is more able to think and act critically in accordance with the evidence both outside his door and beyond himself. Fifty years later, such a recognition of "what's what" and "who's who" based on the ability to judge the information within the social environment is as valuable as ever. This is a wonderful book, written in a very accessible and entertaining style, meant both for an intellectual audience and for the scholastic community as well. While it may not be for "everyman", any person wanting to better understand and more fully appreciate how individual biography and social history meaningfully interact to create the realities we live in will enjoy and appreciate this legendary sociological critique and invitation to the pleasures of a sociological perspective by one of its most remarkable proponents some half century ago.

A customer review on this site states that the editors have changed the word "men" to "people" in the letters. As the publisher, we would like to place this statement in its proper context.

The unmarked edits only occurred in the Tovarich letters, those that were written to an imaginary Russian correspondent. Mills "made it clear [to his agent] that he wanted the Tovarich writings to be edited before they were published . . . his marginal comments included these instructions: 'very good, use it,' 'can't use this,' 'cut somewhat.'" And so, unlike for the rest of the letters, the editors "did not mark deletions with ellipses and occasionally changed the location of paragraphs, shortened a heading, or relaced a heading with a phrase that Mills had written in the text. Although we usually left the original references to men, boys, women, and girls in these essays, we occasionally changed 'men' to 'people.'"

In the rest of the letters, the only editorial changes were spelling corrections and occasional deletions (the latter are always marked with brackets).

I have been eagerly awating the publication of these glimpses into Mills' 'personal' life. The book is organized, for the most part, chronologically. Its contents are mostly letters written by this most influental radical intellectuall of the cold war period. The letters (and autobiographical writings disguised as letters) reveal Mills to be as intense, focused, and dedicated to his social analysis as I, a student of his work, have imagined him to be. The writings are beautifully composed; Mills was indeed both a scientist AND an artist. His musings are inspiring for any student, scholar, or critical minded person who wants an insight into Mills "private" reflections. This book could also serve as a wonderful guide to a study of Mills' life-work, as we are given insight into his concerns and struggles during his writing process. I do have a complaint...his daughters, who have no doubt taken painstaking efforts to compose this work, have been so bold as to alter the language of his personal writings... "we occasionally changed 'men' to 'people'" (p. xiv). I think we are wise enough to realize that Mills language is a reflection of the social and historical context in which he lived...Regardless, we are lucky to have this invaluable resource that provides endless reflections into the life and though of C. Wright Mills. END

C. Wright Mills classic treastise on white collar jobs in middle class America is as concise today as it was 50 years ago. His incisive summations on capitalism are true to their word, the current actions by corporate America happened then and once again history repeats itself. A must read for Sociology and Business students as a cornerstone for the corportate world.

"It is my aim in this book to define the meaning of the social sciences for the cultural tasks of our time. I want to specify the kinds of effort that lie behind the development of the sociological imagination; to indicate its implications for political as well as for cultural life."

The first chapter of this book is "The Promise" and in it Mills takes his stand with the great tradition of the Enlightenment and the idea of liberation by learning. For Mills, the promise is that cultivation of the sociological imagination may enable people to place personal worries and concerns in the larger social and historical context, and thus to think more effectively about them.

Chapters on Grand Theory and Abstracted Empiricism show how the understanding of social processes is impeded by immersion in certain types of theory and in narrow-minded "nomal science". Other chapters explore the many and varied ways that the critical and probing "sociological imagination" can be subverted or frustrated. His description of the Machieavellian tactics employed by academics to sideline rivals is especially revealing (for example, have a potentially dangerous book reviewed by a junior member of a hostile faction). His comments on the function of professional associations and conferences are equally deadly.

The main failing of the book arises from the author's theoretical and ideological stance which is not explicitly articulated but was clearly in the rational and humanistic Marixist tradition. He yearned for a viable alternative to liberalism and Marxism as he saw them in the 1950s but he clearly did not perceive classical liberalism as a candidate that was worthy of mention. It seems that classical, non-socialist liberals were so thin on the ground during his lifetime that he did not see any need to engage with them. That is a major weakness and it prevented Mills, and this book, from reaching the full extent of insight and understanding that his scholarship, his integrity and his industry should have permitted.

The best part of a very good book is the Appendix on Intellectual Craftmanship and this the kind of thing that is worth reading every few years to keep focussed for effective reading, thinking and writing. The remainder of this review consists of extracts from the appendix to convey some of its flavour.

"It is best to begin, I think, by reminding you, the beginning student, that the most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community you have chosen to join do not split their work from their lives.They seem to take both too seriously to allow such dissociation, and they want to use each for the enrichment of the other."

"You must set up a file, which is, I suppose, a sociologist's way of saying: keep a journal...In such a file as I am going to describe, there is joined personal experience and professional activities, studies under way and studies planned..."

"One of the very worst things that happens to social scientists is that they feel the need to write of their 'plans' on only one occasion: when they are going to ask for money for a specific piece of research or 'a project'. It is as a request for funds that most 'planning' is done, or at least written carefully about. However standard the practice, I think this very bad: it is bound in some degree to be salesmanship, and, given prevailing expectations, very likely to result in painstaking pretensions; the project is lilely to be presented', rounded out in some arbitrary manner long before it ought to be; it is often a contrived thing, aimed at getting the money for ulterior purposes, however valuable, as well as for the research presented."

"Any working social scientist who is well on his way ought at all times to have so many plans, that is to say ideas, that the question is always, which of them am I, ought I, to work on next. And he should keep a special file for his master agenda, which he writes and rewrites just for himself and perhaps for discussion with friends. From time to time he ought to review this very carefully and purposefully, and sometimes too, when he is relaxed."

"Any such procedure is one of the indispensable means by which your intellectual enterprise is kept oriented and under control...In [a vigorous and free intellectual community]...there would be interludes of discussion among individuals about future work. Three kinds of interludes - on problems, methods, theory - ought to come out of the work of social scientists and lead into it again: they should be shaped by work-in-progress and to some extend guide their work. It is for such interludes that a professional association finds its intellectual reason for being."

TThis is a masterful work by an original thinker. Wright was concerned with the developments that he was seeing in the social sciences in his time. He was concerned that the social sciences was developing in ways that limited its value to humanity and therefore to itself. He saw the social science of his day as working against true freedom in society by allowing itself to be used to manipulate the population into unthinking acceptance of established authority.

He saw two major trends that removed the social sciences from addressing robust problems whose solution would make genuine differences to humanity. The first was a retreat into 'Theory' so abstract that it was unable to describe anything of significance. Wright uses as an example an article that describes a theory of human relationships that was so abstracted from reality that, as Wright shows, it could not capture the fact that sometimes people accept the norms of their society unwillingly. This theory was wrapped in such opaque jargon to unambiguously define the trivial that it last all relationship to genuine society.

Wright also identifies as a further development in the social sciences, an empiricism so constrained by technique that it can only address the most specific and mundane problem. If theory has become to remote and abstract to contact real society this empiricism is equivalent in being so immersed in the specifics of a society that it cannot capture more than the trivial.

Wright's book is a plea to social scientists to abandon these two enterprises and to return to a social science which is concerned with problems whose solutions will change society,. He calls the ability to find and understand such problems the sociological imagination. He sees practitioners of this form of sociology as inherently political. They may not be in political office but they make their findings known to be acted upon in the political milieu.

Wright sees this as a way to genuine freedom in that the governed will know the structure of the society that is governing them and can then freely choose to live within it or to make changes. Wright is concerned that the social sciences of his time were not used to promote this genuine understanding of society by the population but to manipulate them into a passive acceptance of norms that may not be in their interest. He is afraid of a beneficent tyranny with a population of what he calls happy robots.

This book is a denunciation of passive acquiescence and a plea for informed acceptance as the basis of society. Wright's fears are as valid today as when he wrote them over 40 years ago.

I first came across this book when I was an undergraduate doing a course on introduction to sociology. It was on the required reading list. I had to confess, when I first encountered it, I did not know what to make of the book nor what the fuss was all about.

Now, many years later, I have just finished re-reading the book and am now convinced why this is a classic in the literature of the Social Sciences. Mills in this book seeks to advocate a certain ideal in the discipline of sociology. Known as the sociological imagination, he advocates the idea of using sociology to bear on the unease which man(in a generic sense!) faces in his daily life. Mills is arguing that much of unease felt by the individual has social roots, i.e., it is shared by many others. The cause of such unease has to do with the structure of society and changes that is happening in it. Hence, there is a great need for sociologists (and other social scientists) to articulate how such unease has sociological causes and thus enabling the individual to understand how his biography intersects with the structure and history of his society. In this way, hopefully it will empower to individuals to transform such unease into public issues in order to bring about changes in society.

Overall, this work is intelligently written as well as being morally challenging.Sure, much has changed since the first publication of this book but it is a good place to start for those who wants to find out what is sociology and to those who wants to be reacquainted with the ideals of sociology.

It is a morally challenging work which needs to be read and re-read time and again!

Although this book first came out in the 1950's, the information is still ever so pertinent to American society in the 21st century. Fact: America is operated by a small group of individuals better known as the "elites."

Granted we may live in a democratic society, but truth be told, it is not the millions of common people who have the power - it is those filthy rich people who have money and connections - that run the country. James Madison is probably rolling over in his grave, for when he wrote the Federalist Paper #10, he feared what the majority would do to the minority. Madison had it all wrong - it's the minority that does the controlling of the majority.

Mills book is a powerful read! This is a book that brings a moment of enlightment insofar as to understanding the extent of power the elites possess and the impact of such power in our system.

Mandatory reading for all political science majors and people who are interested in pursuing endeavors in the field of politics.

Profoundly Insightful- 'elitest'
Controversial Sociologist - C Wright Mills
Eloquent - Individual vs Social history

Written in the 1950's Mills attempts to describe the how and why social separation occurs in society (states).

The book is written for the scholastic forum or arguementive intellectual coffee crowd. Thursday night "Book club" readers may not like it's intensity.

...

No one has written with more verve and authority about the awesome and frightening capabilities of man than the late C. Wright Mills, a prominent and controversial sociologist who wrote such memorable tomes as "White Collar", an exploration of the emerging American Middle class in the early 1950s, and "The Sociological Imagination", a brilliant introduction to the values of employing the sociological perspective in better understanding the realities of ordinary life. In this book, "The Power Elite", Mills delivers a provocative examination of the nature of power, privilege, and status in the United States, and how each of these three critical elements of power and property in this country are irrevocably connected to each other, and how they affect and determine the life chances and material hopes of ordinary human beings. What is most amazing about this book is that while it was written almost fifty years ago to detail what Mills saw as the principal characteristics of American society at the century's mid-point, it also has great verve and value in understanding our contemporary cultural dilemma.

After nearly fifty years, that in and of itself is powerful testimony to his enduring value as a scholar and an original thinker. To Mills, it is critical to understand what he viewed as inherent differences between personal troubles of the individual on the one hand, which that particular person has the responsibility to resolve and overcome, and social ills on the other hand, which are beyond both the ken or control of the solitary individual. Indeed, according to Mills, increasingly in the 20th century one finds himself trapped by social circumstance into dilemmas he is absolutely unable to resolve without significant help from the wider social community. "The Power Elite" is a masterful attempt on Mills' part to accurately describe the nature of American society, and to detail how wealth, power, and privilege systematically influence and affect the ordinary individual's progress in the economic, social, and political domains.

Mills specific focus in this book is on the interlocking nature of three aspects of the power elite in this country, including the military, the corporate, and the political elite. According to Mills, they share a mutuality of life experiences, educational backgrounds, and economic situations that they cooperate and support each other to the detriment and disfavor of the mass of ordinary Americans. Mills wanted to alert his contemporaries as to the critical ways in which the nature of power and privilege had changed in the 20th century, and while many critics have openly criticized his findings and his conclusions after the book's publications, many readers now find his prognostications and warnings regarding the ways in which the power elite would collusively wrest and manipulate control of every aspect of life in this country an amazingly accurate critique of the true nature of power and privilege in America.

Mills often write eloquently regarding the ways in which a person's recognition of "what's what" and "who's who" based on the ability to judge the information within the social environment would dramatically aid him or her in operating within the social environment. Obviously, these words and this observation are as valuable as ever. This is a wonderful book, written in a very accessible and entertaining style, meant both for an intellectual audience and for the scholastic community as well. While it may not be for "everyman", any person wanting to better understand and more fully appreciate how individual biography and social history meaningfully interact to create the realities we live in will enjoy and appreciate this legendary sociological critique and invitation to the pleasures of a sociological perspective by one of its most remarkable proponents some half century ago.

I happened upon this wonderful biography and overview of sociologist C. Wright Mills written by the eminent sociologist Irving L. Horowitz several years ago while browsing through the stacks in a Cambridge book store, and spent the next weekend glued to my easy chair reading this quite interesting, sympathetic, yet still very objective biography of a very controversial academic. Mills was a towering, even legendary figure in American academic sociology at mid-century, and just about everything he did was provocative, trend setting, and often downright outrageous.

This iconoclastic motorcycle-riding monster of a man (he was well over six feet and quite imposing physically) refused to be typecast, constrained, or politically correct even in the depths of the straight-laced '50s. There is an amusing story about him most graduate students have heard various versions of regarding Columbia University's vain attempts to get him into line. Mills love to teach sans tie or suit coat in an open white collared shirt and slacks. Evidently someone complained he was not meeting professional dress standards, and the Dean told him he must henceforth always wear a coat and tie in classroom. Sure enough the next day Mills showed up to teach class attired in a suit with tie dutifully tied around his neck, but with no shirt on!

Mills' prolific published work was also very controversial, from "White Collar", a well documented description of the nature of the emerging affluent American middle class, to "The Power Elite", a hard-hitting critique of the nature of wealth, status and power in the United States, to "The Sociological Imagination", an articulate and approachable appeal to a return to classic sociological perspectives and avoiding the twin horns of what he termed to be a foolish and pointless excessive focus on either "high theory" or "research methods" rather than on important and cogent sociological analysis.

Horowitz threads through Mills extraordinary life and times, and paints a not altogether glowing personality behind the bravado, brilliance, and boldness. Mills sometimes was thoughtless, tactless, and cruel to those around him, and could be close to egomaniacal about getting what he felt was his share of the credit. Yet no one can deny the sheer laser power of his piercing intellect, or his willingness to take on the establishment and tell things the way he saw them, often to the great detriment of his academic career. This is a worthwhile, carefully researched, and absolutely entertaining biography and overview of a man and his work. Enjoy.

What is most illuminating about this gossip-ridden compendium of neo-conservative arguments against the brilliant collaboration of famed sociologist C. Wright Mills ("White Collar", "The Sociological Imagination", "The Power Elite") with his long-time friend and fellow University of Wisconsin graduate student Hans Gerth is the fact that it is an obvious attempt to discredit the now famous work of these two scholars. The two collaborated to successfully translate for the American academic and intellectual community many of the heretofore-unavailable works of famed German sociologist Max Weber. In what one of my former professors would refer to as the "carbuncle theory" of history, these two authors attempt to discredit Mills and Gerth by engaging in a vicious (and totally uncalled for) smearing of their admittedly difficult and sometimes stridently competitive combined efforts.

As with the famous carbuncle theory, which was a notorious attempt by conservative turn of the century scholars to explain away Marx's brilliant observations regarding the way in which social forces act as the motive force of history as simple dyspepsia due to his chronic affliction with carbuncles. Of course, the professor's point is that, in the last analysis, Marx's theories must be judged based on their rational and intellectual merits, not on some silly emotional attempt to discredit the author without considering the weight of his or her intellectual argument. So, too, here, we must keep in mind that however messy and unpleasant the process, the fruit of intellectual labors must be judged based on their results rather than on the personalities or character flaws of the individuals involved. Sad to say, it appears that these two authors are all too willing to sully their own academic reputations by engaging in such gossip mongering.

Another reviewer admits to shock and surprise regarding the ways in which petty egos and aggressive careerism affect the ways in which the gentlemen in question behave. Might I suggest he read James D. Watson's own surprising autobiographical accounting for similar shortcomings, personal ambition, and pettiness among the several Nobel laureates who jointly discovered the helical nature of DNA in "The Double Helix"? Perhaps it is time for such naïve people to grow up and recognize the fact that the stuff of science and research is often a messy and unpleasant business, and not at all the stiff, pristine, disinterested, and sanitized search for truth that appears monthly within the carefully arranged type-set pages of "Scientific American" magazine. Noted scientific luminaries like Albert Einstein admitted as much in their own memoirs, and perhaps the reading public should realize that anything as worthwhile as meaningful scientific research doesn't necessarily emanate from people who always chew with their mouths closed. Bad people may in fact do brilliant science, and it matters not a rattler's damn whether we like these people or not.

Therefore, regardless of what these two sociologists say in their shameless attempt to rake over the ashes of the dead in this mean-spirited effort to make their own academic reputation here, the fact remains that both C. Wright Mills and Hans Gerth published widely recognized and acclaimed works during their very fruitful careers, and the efforts they made to collaborate on "From Max Weber", "Character and Social Structure", and other tomes has stood the test of time, and are all still in active use. Moreover, there is a new resurgence of interest in C. Wright Mills work in particular, and one suspects that the two authors writing this book are attempting to capitalize on his newly resurgent cache (witness the new publication of his collected letters) in order to make their own bones and to sell some books of their own. I do not recommend this book. It is a pathetic and singularly unscientific attempt to discredit some of sociology's most prolific and productive authors by deliberately sullying their characters and personal reputations.

As Oakes and Vidich state in their introduction, this book is an anaylsis of the ethics of academic career management. It is NOT a study of how scholars' career choices are affected by the historical conjuncture in which they find themselves, nor is it meant as an assessment of either Gerth's or Mills' contributions to sociological scholarship. Instead, we get an analysis "built close to the ground it covers." In nearly exhaustive detail, the authors paint a devastating picture of one man -- Gerth -- whose undisciplined brilliance left him nearly totally dependent for his academic achievements on another man -- Mills -- who proved to be totally and ruthlessly pragmatic in his own career choices. Although Oakes and Vidich claim not to be taking sides, Gerth comes across as a tragic, bungling, and ultimately self-destructive emigre who was no match for Mills' amibitions to become a "big shot." Mills himself used that telling phrase to describe the people he admired and whose tactics he copied.
Who should read this book?: Graduate students who've not yet made up their mind about going into an academic career, as well as junior faculty whose sensibilities have been jarred by their dawning recognition that "success" is not going to be solely a function of their "talent." Oakes and Vidich's own assessment of what a reader can learn from the book is summed up in their last sentence: "The path to a successful scientific career is traced by the fine line between overweening ambition that inspires doubts about honesty and a diffidence or restraint that disqualifies its possessor from participation in the contest for priority." They make their case very well in this engrossing portrait of the relationship between Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills.

Many of Max Weber's early English translations were created through the joint efforts of H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. When the secrecy, paranoia, and intrigues surrounding their work are carefully examined,it is revealed that two of sociology's notable minds are shown to have all too common shortcomings. Essential reading for those concerned with the ethincs of scholarhship,the work may also be an eye opener for those engaged in collaborative academic research and writing. When one

considers the effort and intellectual rigor requiredto produce important scholarship, and the paltry sums and ego wars typically involved in academic publishing, this book inadvertently gives newmeaning to the notion of a lumpenprofessoriate: a professionally insecure band of academics and their apprentices who diligently toil in a garden of the mind that is sadly overrun with the weeds and detritus of a university system increasingly dominated by a careerist tone--and which can sport a commercial logic and a backbiting spirit that the denizens of Wall Street might envy.

This study serves as a warning to scholars presently working to establish themselves in an academic career and to their keepers, as well: all that glitters,indeed, may not be worth the candle if it distorts the collective norms of scholarly inquiry to the point where they become warped and corroded by the potential of winning a bit of praise from "the marketplace". The danger imnplied throughout the book is that lesserlights may not have the academic gifts of Gerth and Mills--thus anticipating the current academic scene.

Oakes and Vidich are insightful and thorough, but some comparative data would strengthen their argument. Too bad that none are provided. Were Mills and Gerth more similar to,or significantly different from, others in like-situated cohorts of American students and emigre scholars from the Nazi era? If they were different, why? If there was a pattern,why not explore its significance? Such a curious and devastating omission is quite ironic, given the extensive treatment of CHARACTER and SOCIAL STRUCTURE--the thrust of which champions Mills's quest to identify the structural determinants of personal troubles. That Oakes and Vidich are so steeped in biographical specifics that they should stress the individual trees of idiosyncracy (which are located in the PERSONALITY) and ignore the structural forest of the academy, strikes me as odd, at best, for a sociological work,and as being overly psychological, at worst.

Without an interpretive structural framework it is simply impossible to know whether Gerth and Mills were merely examples of STRANGE FOLKS, i.e., wayward individuals, ofifthe issues touched by their distinctively opposed, yet mutually reinforcing, academic styles suggest the emergence of an uncomfortable order of social fact that may come to dominate the modern academy. That two Weberian scholars should miss this is

unfortunate. otr