"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.