"Understanding Weber" provides an accessible and comprehensive explanation of the central issues of Weber's work. Using the most recent scholarship and editions of Weber's writings, Sam Whimster establishes the full range, depth and development of Max Weber's approach to the social and cultural sciences. This path-breaking book: locates the central issues in Weber's writings and relates them to the golden era of social and cultural sciences. It argues that Weber remains the major exponent of the classical tradition still relevant today. It offers a new interpretation of the dynamic of Weber's career as; historian, social-economist, methodologist, and sociologist. Weber's sociology stands as a successful and still valid underwriting of the substantive fields of power, law, rulership, culture, religion, civilizational configurations, and economic sociology. At a time of the turning away from grand theory to empirical policy studies, this book asserts the authority of Weber's conception and calls for a critical engagement with his legacy in order to understand the dynamics of a globalising modernity. This" "is an indispensable guide to Weber's writings and will be an invaluable companion to "The Essential Weber" (2004). The book closely tracks the development of Weber's thinking, an exploration that will make it an obligatory purchase for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers in the fields of sociological theory, economic sociology, and cultural studies.

山姆·維姆斯特（Sam Whimster）是倫敦城市大學《社會學》雜誌的特約審稿人。他還是《馬剋斯·韋伯研究》這本國際性雜誌的編輯，已經齣版瞭大量論述馬剋斯·韋伯的作品。這些齣版物包括《馬剋斯·韋伯與無政府狀態的文化》(Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy)(1999年) 以及《必不可少的韋伯》(勞特利奇齣版社2004年)等。