Includes index.

Contents: Society and illusion -- The Vicissitudes of nineteenth-century rationalism -- The Prophets of praise: Saint-Simon and Comte -- Sociology in the underground: Karl Marx -- The Last gentleman: Alexis De Tocqueville -- Nietzsche's madness -- Do-gooders, evolutionists, and racists -- The Great breakthrough -- Dreyfus's empire: Emile Durkheim and Georges Sorel -- Max Weber: The disenchantment of the world -- Sigmund Freud: Conquistador of the irrational -- The Discovery of the invisible world: Simmel, Cooley, and Mead -- The Vicissitudes of tweentieth-century sophistication -- The discovery of the ordinary world: Thomas, Park, and the Chicago school -- The Emergence of Africa-American sociology: Dubois, Frazier, Drake, and Cayton -- The Construction of the social system: Pareto and Parsons -- Hitler's shadow: Michels, Maannheim, and Mills -- Erving Goffman and the theater of social encounters -- Contemporary sociological theory in France, Germany, and the United States -- The Impact of women in sociology in the late tweentieth century.