Mills felt that the central task for sociology and sociologists was to find (and articulate) the connections between the particular social environments of individuals (also known as "milieu") and the wider social and historical forces in which they are enmeshed. This approach challenges a structural functionalist approach to sociology, as it opens new positions for the individual to inhabit with regard to the larger social structure. Individual function that reproduces larger social structure is only one of many possible roles, and is not necessarily the most important. Mills also wrote of the danger of malaise, which he saw as inextricably embedded in the creation and maintenance of modern societies. This led him to question whether individuals exist in modern societies in the sense that "individual" is commonly understood.

CONTENTS:
1. The Promise
2. Grand Theory
3. Abstracted Empiricism
4. Types of Practicality
5. The Bureaucratic Ethos
6. Philosophies of Science
7. The Human Variety
8. Uses of History
9. On Reason and Freedom
10. On Politics