Explore "White Collar" by C. Wright Mills on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
‘SUCCESS' in America has been a widespread fact, an engaging image, a driving motive, and a way of life. In the middle of the twentieth century, it has become less widespread as fact, more confused as image, often dubious as motive, and soured as a way of life.
No other domestic change is so pivotal for the tang and feel of society in America, or more ambiguous for the inner life of the individual, and none has been so intricately involved in the transformation of the old into the new middle classes. Other strata have certainly been affected, but the middle classes have been most grievously modified by the newer meanings of success and the increased chances of failure.