C wright mills biography summary of winston

(b. 28 August 1916 in Waco, Texas; d. 20 March 1962 in Nyack, New York), leading sociologist in the 1950s and early 1960s, completing White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951) and The Power Elite (1956), books that critiqued the excesses of American capitalism and influenced the development of the New Left during the 1960s.

Mills was the son of Charles Grover Mills, an insurance salesman, and Frances Ursula Wright.

He was raised by his mother and older sister and, at an early age, developed a love of reading. The family moved frequently, finally settling in Dallas, where Mills entered Dallas Technical High School in 1930. He was forced to attend Catholic mass and later wrote, "I never revolted from it; I never had to.

For some reason, it never took." He graduated in 1934 and, at the insistence of his father, enrolled in Texas A&M, a military college. Mills suffered at the hands of the upperclassmen and later claimed that the hazing he ha