ABSTRACT
C. Wright Mills is generally recognized as one of America's foremost radical social dissenters and American sociology's most flamboyant renegade. Like Thorstein Veblen, Mills felt social criticism was a prerequisite to a genuinely democratic society. His contentious intellectual style and failure to "observe the noblesse oblige of sparing his colleagues in print" led to a deep hostility directed toward him and to his marginalization from the mainstream of the discipline. A moralist and a moral man at a time when American sociology was celebrating its value-free stance, Mills maintained a capacity for a sustained indignation directed toward the condition of American society and the sociology which examined it. While US reviews were generally critical of his work, Mills received widespread support and acclaim throughout Latin America, including a special letter of support from several of Mexico's most important cultural figures.
