<P> Above all, Wakefield remembers Mills's character most as being surrounded by controversy: </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> "</Td> <Td> In that era of cautious professors in gray flannel suits, Mills came roaring into Morningside Heights on his BMW motorcycle, wearing plaid shirts, old jeans, and work boots, carrying his books in a duffel bag strapped across his broad chest.... In the classroom as well as in the pages of his widely read books, Mills was a great teacher . His lectures matched the flamboyance of his personal image, as he managed to make entertaining the heavyweight social theories of Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, and José Ortega y Gasset . He shocked us (students) out of our "silent generation" student torpor by pounding his desk and proclaiming that each man should build his own house (as he did himself) and that, by God, with the proper study, we should each be able to build our own car! </Td> <Td>" </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> "</Td> <Td> In that era of cautious professors in gray flannel suits, Mills came roaring into Morningside Heights on his BMW motorcycle, wearing plaid shirts, old jeans, and work boots, carrying his books in a duffel bag strapped across his broad chest.... In the classroom as well as in the pages of his widely read books, Mills was a great teacher . His lectures matched the flamboyance of his personal image, as he managed to make entertaining the heavyweight social theories of Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, and José Ortega y Gasset . He shocked us (students) out of our "silent generation" student torpor by pounding his desk and proclaiming that each man should build his own house (as he did himself) and that, by God, with the proper study, we should each be able to build our own car! </Td> <Td>" </Td> </Tr> <P> In 1964, the Society for the Study of Social Problems established the C. Wright Mills Award for the book that "best exemplifies outstanding social science research and a great understanding the individual and society in the tradition of the distinguished sociologist, C. Wright Mills ." </P>

A famous sociology professor who rode a bmw motorcycle (and a leather jacket) to work every morning
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