"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·维姆斯特（Sam Whimster）是伦敦城市大学《社会学》杂志的特约审稿人。他还是《马克斯·韦伯研究》这本国际性杂志的编辑，已经出版了大量论述马克斯·韦伯的作品。这些出版物包括《马克斯·韦伯与无政府状态的文化》(Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy)(1999年) 以及《必不可少的韦伯》(劳特利奇出版社2004年)等。