The Emerald Guide to C. Wright Mills: (Emerald Guides to Social Thought)

This book offers a comprehensive guide to reading and understanding the development of Mills's sociological ideas, placing them in the context of his life and his position in American sociology. The Emerald Guide to C. Wright Mills focusses on his concern with the interrelationship between social structure and personality, and with the bureaucratisation of modern society and the power relations it produces. The book takes a chronological and biographical approach in illustrating the development of Mills's ideas and interests over the course of his career. In doing so, it reveals the consistency as well as the evolution of his thinking. Essential reading for students and those new to Mills's ideas, this is a readable, clear, and comprehensive overview of the work of C. Wright Mills, and conveys his influence on contemporary social thought.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Mills in Context Chapter 2. Mills: Life, Career, Politics Chapter 3. Pragmatism, Sociology of Knowledge, and Sociological Psychology Chapter 4. Organised Labour Chapter 5. The American Middle Classes Chapter 6. The High and the Mighty Chapter 7. Political Responsibility and Truth Chapter 8. The Sociological Imagination Chapter 9. Mills: Looking Back, Forward-Looking

About the Author :
A. Javier Treviño is the author and editor of several books including The Social Thought of C. Wright Mills and C. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution: An Exercise in the Art of Sociological Imagination. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the Republic of Moldova and is a Visiting Professor in Social and Political Theory at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Review :
This very lively and readable book brilliantly locates Mills's work in its biographical and social context - something which was also characteristic of his own wide-ranging critical sociology. Treviño's comprehensive knowledge of Mills's work and of the American society and sociology of the period makes this much more than just an introductory book. It will be a valuable resource for specialists as well as for readers beginning an encounter with a thinker who remains highly relevant today. Professor Treviño's comprehensive presentation of C.Wright Mills's work, set within Mills' own framework of the dynamic between biography and history, is a great read. Mills' writings offer an approach for understanding our contemporary society in all its complexity, and Treviño's book is highly recommended for students and scholars alike as an exceptional guide into these classic texts. A. Javier Treviño does a service to a new generation by this introduction to the thought of C. Wright Mills. He shows how Mills worked as a sociologist, and how he developed his view of American society, and the social psychology of its different groups, out of a concern for democracy - as well as describing his transformation into a radical plain-speaking critic of Cold war liberalism and the trivializing sociology that went with it, that made him a prominent international public intellectual, a target of relentless attacks, and a hero to the New Left and to future sociologists.