ABSTRACT
C. Wright Mills is one of the few professional sociologists since the Second World War whose work has excited attention outside academic circles. Five sets of influences went to the shaping of Mills's sociology. The first was the philosophic heritage of pragmatism with which he was concerned in his doctoral thesis. The second was the empirical study of social stratification and mass communication. The third was his contact with the brilliant group of refugee scholars who arrived in America in the thirties and who combined sociological, Marxist and Freudian insights in their attempt to explain the rise of Nazism. The fourth was Mills's own personal encounter with the Cold War, and the fifth, his reflection on the political timidity of his colleagues. From pragmatism Mills obtained the kind of philosophic education which made him immediately appreciative of European thinking about history and the social sciences.
