A workmate just received a copy of the revised copy of C. Wright Mills’ Power Elite and noticed that my name is on the back of it!
Not sure where Oxford UP got my blurb, but think it must have been from a comment card from an examination copy of a course I taught. Sadly, I didn’t have much to say. So maybe I should put in a few more good words for the book. It’s actually less valuable for its power-elite these - which at the very least needs some minor qualification to work - than for Mills’ marvelous writing ability and analytical mind. He’s able to condense complex ideas into clear, understandable prose. (One of my favorite aphorisms: “When a handful of men do not have jobs, and do not seek work, we look for the causes in their immediate situation and character. But when twelve million men are unemployed, then we cannot believe that all of them suddenly ‘got lazy’ and turned out to be ‘no good.’”[321]) Furthermore, even his tangents are worthy in their own right - the chapter on the Mass Society seems prescient and is insightful enough for Habermas to have lifted its thesis wholesale for his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. In sum, it’s the sort of book that more people could use to think with in approaching problems sociologically.
I have to say, though, that I like the old cover a lot better.
No comments have been added to this post yet.