"The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.  That is its task and its promise.  To recognize this task and this promise is the mark of the classic social analyst.  It is characteristic of Herbert Spencer--turgid, polysyllabic, comprehensive; of E. A. Ross--graceful, muckraking, upright; of Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim; of the intricate and subtle Karl Mannheim.  It is the quality of all the is intellectually excellent in Karl Marx; it is the clue to Thorstein Veblen's brilliant and ironic insight . . . no less than of the profundity and clarity of Max Weber"  (The Sociological Imagination, 1959, p. 6).