C. Wright Mills Letters and Autobiographical Writings
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C. Wright Mills was a maverick social scientist who taught in Copenhagen, London, and Mexico City in addition to the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages. Kathryn Mills works for a book publisher in Boston. Pamela Mills teaches American literature and composition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Dan Wakefield is the author of New York in the Fifties (1992), which is the basis for a documentary film, Island in the City: The World of Spanish Harlem (1959), and many other works, including the best-selling novels Going All the Way (1970) and Selling Out (1985)."The extraordinary C. Wright Mills was an intellectual hero of the New Left, a model of the engaged academic. This volume of his letters and writings provides a fascinating insight into Mills as a person - as a family man and a friend - as well as a thinker. Mills packed so much into his terribly short life, and young people today should find inspiration in his enormous energy, his breadth of interest, and his political boldness." - Howard Zinn, Boston University "The 'Tovarich' essays are among the highlights of the long overdue C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings...a book of many revelations and felicities that sees the light of day 38 years after Mills' death. This volume...is indispensable to a picture of intellectuals and politics in our time, tracing out the contours of a robust life of the mind, an odyssey that seems as quaint today as anything in Homer." - Todd Gitlin, Los Angeles Times Book Review "This collection...reminds us of the writer's scrupulous and generous mind, presenting ideas that continue to resonate today...[it] offers a glimpse into the writer's personal life as well as into his intellectual relationships. One of the great discoveries included in the book is Mills's FBI file, which was started after he wrote the best-selling Listen, Yankee (1960), a defense of the Cuban revolution. This file, which documents a possible assassination attempt on Mills in response to the book, is a chilling reminder of the hostility faced by liberal intellectuals in the 1950s." - Publishers Weekly
"This carefully and lovingly edited volume is bound to revive interest in the work and life of one of the most creative radical intellectuals of the postwar years."—Lewis A. Coser, Boston University
"C. Wright Mills was a passionate public citizen, and therefore, he wrote to be read beyond the academy. He succeeded, making many non-tenured people think, me included. This book further illuminates the life-force within this professor beyond borders."—Nat Hentoff, author of Living the Bill of Rights
"C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings is an invaluable guide to the thought and sensibilities of one of the greatest sociologists of the twentieth century. This book is a must for sociologists, social science students and historians."—Saul Landau, Hugh O. La Bounty Chair of Applied Interdisciplinary Knowledge, California Polytechnic University
“The personal testimony of a courageous American thinker will afford younger readers a direct look at our past, and perhaps teach them--as Mills did for many of us--that living fully requires thinking largely.”—Norman Birnbaum, Georgetown University Law Center
“Mills was among the most intellectually engaging of American social scientists, and he deserves our continuing attention. As these letters and autobiographical essays bring out, he exemplified both a highly personal perspective and a commitment to issues of basic public importance. He saw the connections between biography and intellectual insight, and in this wonderfully edited collection, his writings demonstrate a clarity of perception that adds to our understanding of both his work and his period.” —Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council