C. Wright Mills is one of the few sociologists of the twentieth century who wrote within the classical tradition of sociology (Elwell, 2000). As a professor of sociology at Columbia University, Mills wrote throughout the 1940s and 1950s, publishing in major newspapers and journals of opinion and in "little magazines" in equal measure (Summers, 2000). Two of his books, White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite (1956), sold very well even outside academia and were very influential upon the early New Left (Summers, 2000). Thus, even though Mills died in March 1962 at the age of 45, his ten books and nearly 200 articles, essays and reviews had already won him an international reputation.
Mills's vision, as expressed in his work, demonstrates a holistic view of socio-cultural systems with strong influences from Karl Marx and other 19th century theorists, as well as prevailing social theories such as realism and postmodernism. Mills believed that to understand nation-states as international actors we first needed to understand the sociological relationships that formed each of those nation-states. And to understand such sociological relationships, we first needed to understand individual human development. But we could not understand any of these factors fully unless we understood each factor's relationship to the other. Thus, he argued that to study all human relations, it was necessary to recognize human variety and apply sociological theories that took into account all of historical reality (Mills, 1959, p. 134). His aim was to define such reality by forming a fully comparative understanding of the social structures that have existed and do now exist in world history. Specifically, he argued that such work required that social analysts avoid "the arbitrary specialization of academic departments" and instead draw upon the perspectives and ideas of any and all suitable studies of man as an historical actor (Mills, 1959, p. 134)....