The Sociological Imagination, Fortieth Anniversary Edition, C. Wright Mills, c. 1959, 2000

2000 copyright with new afterword by Todd Gitlin.

See wiki: C. Wright Mills.

See wiki: sociological imagination.

From wiki: Sociological imagination is a term used in the field of sociology to describe a framework for understanding social reality that places personal experiences within a broader social and historical context.

Personal issue:
an individual drops out of college after his first year
Broader social and historical context:

upwards of 20 - 30% of college students drop out ofter their first year. (AI, google, January 9, 2025)

So, this is a "field of study" within sociology: sociological imagination.

It was formulated by C. Wright Mills after WWII and published during rapid years of US industrialization, being first published in 1959.

From AI, google, January 9, 2025:

Some of the most important events in US history during the 1950s include: the Korean War, the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement marked by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the integration of Little Rock Central High School with the "Little Rock Nine", and the rise of rock and roll music popularized by Elvis Presley.

A wiki entry makes the point that C. Wright Mills (from hereon out, "Mills") did not discuss much with regard to race.

From wiki entry on Mills: 

William Form describes a 2005 survey of the eleven best selling texts and in these Mills was referenced 69 times, far more than any other prominent author. 

Frank W. Elwell, in his paper "The Sociology of C. Wright Mills" further explains the legacy Mills left as he "writes about issues and problems that matter to people, not just to other sociologists, and he writes about them in a way to further our understanding." 

His work is not just useful to students of sociology, but the general population as well. Mills tackled relevant topics such as the growth of white collar jobs, the role of bureaucratic power, as well as the Cold War and the spread of communism. 

I think the Holocaust example in wiki was way too simplistic, linking it to a failure of Germans have a sociological imagination.

Gitlin: "craftsman" was one of Mills' favorite words, p. 230. Mills says he was a Wobbly, defined as the "opposite of a bureaucrat."

Issue of "bureaucracy." Max Weber.

Who was Mills' audience? Who was he addressing? Who was he writing for?

Did your college professor address that question? If so, what did your professor suggest?

What was Mills' view on society?

C. Wright Mills was an American sociologist in the 20th-century. He believed in social conflict theory, meaning he thought that society was structured by a ruling elite controlling lower classes through shared institutions.

Gitlin, p. 239: "Mills did not sufficiently apply his sociological imagination to the vexing, central problem of race. Mills himself hated racism, but although he lived through the early years of the civil rights movement, he wrote surprisingly little about the dynamics of race in American life. The students of the civil rights movement interestd him as one of many groupings of young intellectuals rising into history around the globe, but the way in which racial identification shaped and distorted people's life-chances did not loom large for him. -- That whole paragraph on p. 239 needs to be read and re-read.

From wiki's Mills entry:

The Power Elite (1956) describes the relationships among the political, military, and economic elites, noting that they share a common world view; that power rests in the centralization of authority within the elites of American society.[60][page needed] The centralization of authority is made up of the following components: a "military metaphysic", in other words a military definition of reality; "class identity", recognizing themselves as separate from and superior to the rest of society; "interchangeability" (they move within and between the three institutional structures and hold interlocking positions of power therein); cooperation/socialization, in other words, socialization of prospective new members is done based on how well they "clone" themselves socially after already established elites. Mills's view on the power elite is that they represent their own interest, which include maintaining a "permanent war economy" to control the ebbs and flow of American Capitalism and the masking of "a manipulative social and political order through the mass media."[58][page needed] Additionally, this work can be described as "an exploration of rational-legal bureaucratic authority and its effects on the wielders and subjects of this power."[47] President Dwight D. Eisenhower referenced Mills and this book in his farewell address of 1961. He warned about the dangers of a "military-industrial complex" as he had slowed the push for increased military defense in his time as president for two terms. This idea of a "military-industrial complex" is a reference to Mills' writing in The Power Elite, showing what influence this book had on certain powerful figures.[61]

The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of the American society and suggests that the ordinary citizen in modern times is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those three entities.

So, if that's true, again, who is Mills' audience? To whom is he writing?

    -- a) a political science graduate student planning to run for political office
    -- b) Laura's blue-collar husband who is seen as nothing more than a cog in the gear that may soon be replaced by a robot / AI
    -- c) fellow professors looking for tenure
    -- d) Olivia, an ROTC student that 20 years from now might be a commander in the military (USAF)?

    -- e) CEOs of American publicly traded companies

A follow-on question to whom is he writing, why is he writing? What is his goal?

Obviously, as a sociologist, Mills lives on (based on the 2005 survey). The question is to what extent did his writings in the 1950s predict / match American realities in 2025? 

For example:

  -- Mills seems to have missed the importance of race relations; or would he argue that people like me are over-emphasizing race relations today?

  -- can billionaire CEOs today like the CEO of JPMorgan (a bank); CEO of XOM (largest public oil company in the world); CEO of  Amazon (Jeff Bezos) relate to this; or is a new post-Trump model needed? In other words, has Mills succeeded and now it's time to move on?

Did Mills simply expand Eisenhower's "military-industrial" complex into Mills' "military-industrial-political" complex?