This volume is designed first to provide a theoretical orientation and historical perspective on the rise of the middle classes in modern civilization‎,‎ and second‎,‎ to portray the social and political roles these classes have played and continue to play in the United States over the past century‎,‎ with particular reference to the American class structure and political economy‎.‎ Our method is necessarily both historical and sociological and offers an orientation for understanding contemporary American society‎.‎ The essays included here were written between 1926 and 1982‎:‎ they reveal both the genealogical development of sociological thought about the middle classes and the substantive content of these classes‎'‎ life styles‎,‎ status claims and political orientations‎.‎ The present work stresses empirical studies and puts forth neither a theoretical interpretation nor a conceptual taxonomy‎;‎ rather it delineates the emergence and the social and political significance of the new middle classes in relation to the classes‎,‎ above and below‎,‎ that preceded them‎.‎