assist in mediation and dispute resolution (Diaz 2001; Rebach 2001), improving community services (e.g., finding ways to extend phone service to the speechdisabled [Segalman 1998]), improving help for victims of violence (Kilpatrick, Resick, and Williams 2001), or even in designing more effective social settings for human interactions from child-care centers to offices to night clubs (DuBois 2001). Some sociologists are also starting to work in high-tech fields (Guice 1999). Sociologists are even working with scholars in a variety of disciplines on future studies (Bell 1997; Masini 2000; Shostak 2003). People trained in sociology are found across society, even though they are not always famous for being sociologists. Peter Dreier (2001) has put together a “Sociology All-Star Team” to demonstrate the widely varied activities of a number of well-known people who majored in sociology. His list includes entertainment personalities Regis Philbin, Robin Williams, Dan Aykroyd, and Debra Winger, and sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Well-known sociology majors in the world of sports include NBA all-star Alonzo Mourning, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Theismann, and sportscaster Ahmad Rashad. Olympic track and field gold medalist Gail Devers also holds a sociology degree (Gail Devers). Beyond their accomplishments in the entertainment and sports arenas, sociologists have made many world-changing contributions to society. Saul Bellow won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and Jane Addams and Emily Balch both won the Nobel Peace Prize. The civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and the Reverend Jesse Jackson studied sociology. So did Frances Perkins, an industrial sociologist who fought to improve conditions in early-twentieth-century textile mills. Perkins became the first female member of a presidential cabinet, serving as secretary of labor under President Franklin Roosevelt. Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States, also had a sociology degree (Dreier 2001). A number of other notable politicians, including Shirley Chisolm and Maxine Waters, studied sociology. The range of careers for sociologists, the job skills sociologists have, and the training they receive is discussed in more detail in chapter 11. THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION Sociologists talk about the connection between learning to understand and then change society as being the sociological imagination. C. Wright Mills (1916–62), a colorful and controversial professor at New York’s Columbia University who is profiled below, coined this term. The sociological imagination is the ability to see the interrelationships between biography and history, or the connections between our individual lives and larger social forces at work shaping our lives (e.g., racism or political agendas). Mills urged us to understand that our own personal fortunes or troubles (e.g., gain/loss of a job, divorce) must be understood in terms of larger public issues (e.g., the health of the economy, societal changes in the institution of marriage). They cannot be fully understood outside of this social context. Mills opens his well-known classic The Sociological Imagination by noting how intertwined social forces and personal lives are: