charles wright mills

Charles Wright Mills C. Wright Mills was born in Waco, Texas on August 28, 1916 and lived in Texas until he was twenty-three years old.[1] His father, Charles Grover Mills, worked as an insurance salesman while his mother,Frances Wright Mills, stayed at home as a housewife.[1][4] His family moved constantly when he was growing up and as a result, he lived a relatively isolated life with few continuous relationships.[5] Mills graduated from Dallas Technical High School in 1934.[6] He initially attended Texas A&M University but left after his first year and subsequently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 with a bachelor's degree in sociology and a master's degree in philosophy. By the time he graduated, Mills had already been published in the two leading sociology journals in the U.S., the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology.[7] Mills received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1942. His dissertation was entitled "A Sociological Account of Pragmatism: An Essay on the Sociology of Knowledge."[8] Mills refused to revise his dissertation while it was reviewed, and it was later accepted without approval from the review committee.[9] Mills left Wisconsin in early 1942 upon being appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Mills was described as a man in a hurry, and aside from his hurried nature, he was largely known for his combativeness. Both his private life, with three marriages, a child from each, and several affairs, and his professional life, which involved challenging and criticizing many of his professors and coworkers, are characterized as "tumultuous". He wrote a fairly obvious, though slightly veiled, essay in criticism of the former chairman of the Wisconsin department, and called the senior theorist there, Howard Becker, a "real fool". On one special occasion when Mills was honored during a visit to the Soviet Union as a major critic of