White Collar: The American Middle Classes

White Collar: The American Middle Classes

In print for fifty years, <em>White Collar</em> by C. Wright Mills is considered a standard on the subject of the new middle class in twentieth-century America. This landmark volume demonstrates how the conditions and styles of middle class life--originating from elements of both the newer lower and upper classes--represent modern society as a whole.<br> By examining white-collar life, Mills aimed to learn something about what was becoming more typically "American" than the once-famous Western frontier character. He painted a picture instead of a society that had evolved into a business-based milieu, viewing America instead as a great salesroom, an enormous file, and a new universe of management.<br> Russell Jacoby, author of <em>The End of Utopia</em> and <em>The Last Intellectuals</em>, contributes a new Afterword to this edition, in which he reflects on the impact <em>White Collar</em> had at its original publication and considers what it means to our society today.<br> "A book that persons of every level of the white collar pyramid should read and ponder. It will alert them to their condition for their better salvation."-Horace M. Kaellen, <em>The New York Times</em> (on the first edition)<br>