This volume is a collection of original essays by leading figures in recent scholarship on the classical sociological theorists. 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 fill a serious void that currently exists in the literature between introductory summaries on the one hand and specialized monographs on the other.