heir decisions (or lack thereof) have enormous consequences, not only for Americans but, "the underlying populations of the world." Mills posits that the institutions that they head are a triumvirate of groups that have inherited or succeeded weaker predecessors:
- "two or three hundred giant corporations" which have replaced the traditional agrarian and craft economy,
- a strong federal political order that has inherited power from "a decentralized set of several dozen states" and "now enters into each and every cranny of the social structure," and
- the military establishment, formerly an object of "distrust fed by state militia," but now an entity with "all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain."
Importantly and as distinct from modern American conspiracy theory, Mills explains that the elite themselves may not be aware of their status as an elite, noting that "often they are uncertain about their roles" and "without conscious effort, they absorb the aspiration to be... The Ones Who Decide." Nonetheless, he sees them as a quasi-hereditary caste. The members of the power elite, according to Mills, often enter into positions of societal prominence through educations obtained at eastern establishment universities like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. But, Mills notes, "Harvard or Yale or Princeton is not enough... the point is not Harvard, but which Harvard?"
Mills identifies two classes of Ivy League alumni: those were initiated into an upper echelon fraternity such as the Harvard College social clubs of Porcellian or Fly Club, and those who were not. Those so initiated, Mills continues, receive their invitations based on social links first established in elite private preparatory academies, where they were enrolled as part of family traditions and family connections. In that manner, the mantle of the elite is generally passed down along familial lines over the generations.
The resulting elites, who control the three dominant institutions (military, economy and political system) can be generally grouped into one of six types, according to Mills:
- the "Metropolitan 400:" members of historically-notable local families in the principal American cities who are generally represented on the Social Register
- "Celebrities:" prominent entertainers and media personalities
- the "Chief Executives:" presidents and CEOs of the most important companies within each industrial sector
- the "Corporate Rich:" major landowners and corporate shareholders
- the "Warlords:" senior military officers, most importantly the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- the "Political Directorate:" "fifty-odd men of the executive branch" of the U.S. federal government, including the senior leadership in the Executive Office of the President, who are sometimes variously drawn from elected officials of the Democratic and Republican parties but are usually professional government bureaucrats
Mills formulated a very short summary of his book: "Who, after all, runs America? No one runs it altogether, but in so far as any group does, the power elite
- Broadcast license
- Retransmission consent
- Glossary of broadcasting terms
- List of sports television broadcast contracts
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), one of the 17 specialized agencies of the United Nations, aims to eliminate signal piracy. WIPO maintains that broadcasters' rights:[1]
- safeguard costly investments in televising sporting events
- recognize and reward the entrepreneurial efforts of broadcasting organizations
- recognize and reward their contribution to diffusion of information and culture
Robbins Research International Coach Reviews
From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946) was edited and translated in collaboration with Gerth. Mills and Gerth had begun collaborating in 1940, selected a few of Weber's original German text, and translated them into English.[65] The preface of the book begins by explaining the disputable difference of meaning that English words give to German writing. The authors attempt to explain their devotion to being as accurate as possible in translating Weber's writing.
The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948) studies the "Labor Metaphysic" and the dynamic of labor leaders cooperating with business officials. The book concludes that the labor movement had effectively renounced its traditional oppositional role and become reconciled to life within a capitalist system.
The Puerto Rican Journey (1950), published in New York, was written in collaboration with Clarence Senior and Rose Kohn Goldsen. Clarence Senior was a Socialist Political activist who specialized in Puerto Rican affairs. Rose Kohn Goldsen was a sociology professor at Cornell University who studied the social effects of television and popular culture. The book documents a methodological study and does not address a theoretical sociological framework.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951) offers a rich historical account of the middle classes in the United States and contends that bureaucracies have overwhelmed middle-class workers, robbing them of all independent thought and turning them into near-automatons, oppressed but cheerful. Mills states there are three types of power within the workplace: coercion or physical force; authority; and manipulation.[66] Through this piece, the thoughts of Mills and Weber seem to coincide in their belief that Western Society is trapped within the iron cage of bureaucratic rationality, which would lead society to focus more on rationality and less on reason.[66] Mills's fear was that the middle class was becoming "politically emasculated and culturally stultified," which would allow a shift in power from the middle class to the strong social elite.[67] Middle-class workers receive an adequate salary but have become alienated from the world because of their inability to affect or change it. Frank W. Elwell describes this work as "an elaboration and update on Weber's bureaucratization process, detailing the effects of the increasing division of labor on the tone and character of American social life."[46]
Character and Social Structure (1953) was co-authored with Gerth. This was considered his most theoretically sophisticated work. Mills later came into conflict with Gerth, though Gerth positively referred to him as, "an excellent operator, a whippersnapper, promising young man on the make, and Texas cowboy à la ride and shoot."[37] Generally speaking, Character and Social Structure combines the social behaviorism and personality structure of pragmatism with the social structure of Weberian sociology. It is centered on roles, how they are interpersonal, and how they are related to institutions.[68]
The Power Elite (1956) describes the relationships among the political, military, and economic elites, noting that they share a common world view; that power rests in the centralization of authority within the elites of American society.[69] The centralization of authority is made up of the following components: a "military metaphysic", in other words a military definition of reality; "class identity", recognizing themselves as separate from and superior to the rest of society; "interchangeability" (they move within and between the three institutional structures and hold interlocking positions of power therein); cooperation/socialization, in other words, socialization of prospective new members is done based on how well they "clone" themselves socially after already established elites. Mills's view on the power elite is that they represent their own interest, which include maintaining a "permanent war economy" to control the ebbs and flow of American Capitalism and the masking of "a manipulative social and political order through the mass media."[67] Additionally, this work can be described as "an exploration of rational-legal bureaucratic authority and its effects on the wielders and subjects of this power."[46] President Dwight D. Eisenhower referenced Mills and this book in his farewell address of 1961. He warned about the dangers of a "military-industrial complex" as he had slowed the push for increased military defense in his time as president for two terms. This idea of a "military-industrial complex" is a reference to Mills' writing in The Power Elite, showing what influence this book had on certain powerful figures.[70]
The Causes of World War Three (1958) and Listen, Yankee (1960) were important works that followed. In both, Mills attempts to create a moral voice for society and make the power elite responsible to the "public". Although Listen, Yankee was considered highly controversial, it was an exploration of the Cuban Revolution written from the viewpoint of a Cuban revolutionary and was a very innovative style of writing for that period in American history. In his paper on Mills's work, Elwell describes The Causes of World War Three as a jeremiad on Weber's ideas. More specifically on his view of "crackpot realism" (" the disjunction between institutional rationality and human reason").[46]
The Sociological Imagination (1959), which is considered Mills's most influential book,[d] describes a mindset for studying sociology, the sociological imagination, that stresses being able to connect individual experiences and societal relationships. The three components that form the sociological imagination are history, biography, and social structure. Mills asserts that a critical task for social scientists is to "translate personal troubles into public issues". The distinction between troubles and issues is that troubles relate to how a single person feels about something while issues refer to how a society affects groups of people. For instance, a man who cannot find employment is experiencing a trouble, while a city with a massive unemployment rate makes it not just a personal trouble but a public issue.[75] This book helped the "penetration of a field by a new generation of social scientists dedicated to problems of social change rather than system maintenance".[76] Mills bridged the gap between truth and purpose in sociology. Another important part of this book is the interpersonal relations Mills talks about, specifically marriage and divorce. Mills rejects all external class attempts at change because he sees them as a contradiction to the sociological imagination. Mills had a lot of sociologists talk about his book, and the feedback was varied. Mills' writing can be seen as a critique of some of his colleagues, which resulted in the book generating a large debate. His critique of the sociological profession is one that was monumental in the field of sociology and that got lots of attention as his most famous work. One can interpret Mills's claim in The Sociological Imagination as the difficulty humans have in balancing biography and history, personal challenges and societal issues. Sociologists, then, rightly connect their autobiographical, personal challenges to social institutions. Social scientists should then connect those institutions to social structures and locate them within a historical narrative.
The version of Images of Man: The Classic Tradition in Sociological Thinking (1960) worked on by C. Wright Mills is simply an edited copy with the addition of an introduction written himself. Through this work, Mills explains that he believes the use of models is the characteristic of classical sociologists, and that these models are the reason classical sociologists maintain relevance.
The Marxists (1962) takes Mills's explanation of sociological models from Images of Man and uses it to criticize modern liberalism and Marxism. He believes that the liberalist model does not work and cannot create an overarching view of society, but rather it is more of an ideology for the entrepreneurial middle class. Marxism, however, may be incorrect in its overall view, but it has a working model for societal structure, the mechanics of the history of society, and the roles of individuals. One of Mills's problems with the Marxist model is that it uses units that are small and autonomous, which he finds too simple to explain capitalism. Mills then provides discussion on Marx as a determinist.
Books or publications by Buffett:
- The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America, Warren Buffett and Lawrence A. Cunningham, The Cunningham Group; revised edition (April 11, 2001). ISBN 978-0-9664461-1-1.
- The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Second Edition, Warren E. Buffett and Lawrence A. Cunningham, The Cunningham Group; 2nd edition (April 14, 2008). ISBN 978-0-9664461-2-8.
Some best-selling, or otherwise notable, books about Buffett:
- Carol J. Loomis, Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966–2012: A Fortune Magazine Book.
- Preston Pysh, Warren Buffett's Three Favorite Books[226] (an interactive book that references Buffett's Books for online videos).[224]
- Roger Lowenstein, Buffett, Making of an American Capitalist.
- Robert Hagstrom, The Warren Buffett Way.[224][227]
- Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life[228] (written with Buffett's cooperation).[229]
- Mary Buffett and David Clark, Buffettology[230] and four subsequent books (combined sales of more than 1.5 million copies).[224]
- Janet Lowe, Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Greatest Investor.[231]
- John Train, The Midas Touch: The Strategies That Have Made Warren Buffett 'America's Preeminent Investor'.[232]
- Andrew Kilpatrick, Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett[233] (the longest of the books about Buffett, with 330 chapters, 1,874 pages and 1,400 photos, weighing 10.2 pounds).[224]
- Robert P. Miles (2004). Warren Buffett Wealth: Principles and Practical Methods Used by the World's Greatest Investor. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-46511-9.
- John P. Reese, "The Guru Investor: How to Beat the Market Using History's Best Investment Strategies"[234] (includes step-by-step stock-picking method based on Buffett's approach).
- Tavakoli, Janet M. (January 6, 2009). Dear Mr. Buffett: What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles from Wall Street. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-44273-9.
- Janjigian, Vahan (May 1, 2008). Even Buffett Isn't Perfect: What You Can--and Can't--Learn from the World's Greatest Investor. Penguin. ISBN 9781440631474.