A collection of original essays by sociologists and intellectual historians who have been leading figures in scholarship on the classical sociological theorists.

This volume is a collection of original essays by sociologists and intellectual historians who have been leading figures in recent scholarship on the classical sociological theorists. The volume includes essays by Mary Pickering on Auguste Comte, Moishe Postone on Kar Marx, Valerie A. Haines on Herbert Spencer, Robert Alun Jones on Emile Durkheim, Donald N. Levine on Georg Simmel, Stephen Kalberg on Max Weber, Martin Bulmer on Robert E. Park and W. I. Thomas, and Hans Joas on George Herbert Mead. Also included is a wide-ranging examinatin of neglected woman founders by Lynn McDonald plus a concluding analysis of recent developments in the area of classical theory by Alan Sica.
Offering a novel blend of historicist and presentist approaches to reclaiming sociology's rich intellectual past, the studies in the collection provide an analytic guide to the vast secondary literature that has appeared in recent years. The essays also dispel longstanding stereotypes about the lives and works of these theorists and propose major revisionist reinterpretations of their thought.

Taken together, the studies in the volume fill the serious void that currently exists in the literature between, on the one hand, introductory summaries of the ideas of various classical authors, and, on the other, specialized monographs and articles devoted to the examination of particular thinkers.