THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. Very good in very good plus jacket.. First edition of this cultural critique by the Columbia sociologist and popularizer of the term "New Left." THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION addresses itself to the host of troubles felt in a transformative age, outwardly prosperous and inwardly at the mercy of society's "alienating methods of production, its enveloping techniques of political domination"; to a people overwhelmed by information but incapable of using it to escape the twin traps of panic and indifference. What such people needed in such an age, Mills argued, was what he called the sociological imagination: a quality of mind allowing a thinker to understand their personal struggles in accurate relation to their social position and historical period. The book met with some immediate contemporary outrage from wounded members of the profession it criticized; just a few decades later, the International Sociological Association ranked it the second-most influential work of the twentieth century. 8'' x 5.5''. Original blue-stamped black cloth. In original unclipped ($6.00) dust jacket by Yaroslava. 234 pages. Offsetting to endpapers, light foxing to edges of text block and jacket folds. Light wear and chipping to jacket edges, with a few small closed tears.