Social Thought In America

Aimed at a generation of students and activists who have probably encountered very little of his work, this is a thoughtful and engaging exploration of the critical social thought of C. Wright Mills.

Sociologist, social critic, and political radical C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) was one of the leading public intellectuals in twentieth century America. Offering an important new understanding of Mills and the times in which he lived, Radical Ambition challenges the captivating caricature that has prevailed of him as a lone rebel critic of 1950s complacency. Instead, it places Mills within broader trends in American politics, thought, and culture. Indeed, Daniel Geary reveals that Mills shared key assumptions about American society even with those liberal intellectuals who were his primary opponents. The book also sets Mills firmly within the history of American sociology and traces his political trajectory from committed supporter of the Old Left labor movement to influential herald of an international New Left. More than just a biography, Radical Ambition illuminates the career of a brilliant thinker whose life and works illustrate both the promise and the dilemmas of left-wing social thought in the United States.

The authors argue that the most influential and well-known educational policy programs in the past 30 years are not based on democratic consensus, but are instead formulated by the political community as symbolic efforts meant to generate personal partisan gain.

A pioneering and influential examination of how social institutions and values shaped American scientific practice and thought. In its original edition, No Other Gods offered a pioneering and influential examination of the ways in which social institutions and values shaped American scientific practice and thought. In this revised and expanded edition, Rosenberg directs our attention to the dilemma posed by the social study of science: How can we reconcile the scientist's understanding of science as a quest for truth and knowledge with the historian's conviction that all knowledge bears the marks of the culture which gave it birth?

Catholic Social Thought presents detailed commentary and response to the Vatican's 2005 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, with contributions from outstanding American scholars. Addressing theology, social theory, the family, economy, government, labor, global society, gender, peace, and the environment, the various authors explore the core theology, explain the Compendium's themes and arguments, and apply their own intellectual powers to applications of its teachings. Some of the essays are largely expository, some more critical (in both positive and negative senses). Some operate from a standard of magisterial assent in conformity with Ad Tuendam Fidam, others do not. Together, the essays represent the range of Catholic thinking on social issues in the American Church today.