The Emerald Guide to C. Wright Mills

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.