Max Weber

Max Weber (1864-1920) is recognized throughout the world as themost important classic thinker in the social sciences - thereis simply no one in the history of the social sciences who has beenmore influential. The affinity between capitalism andprotestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, theforce of charisma in religion as well as in politics, theall-embracing process of rationalization and the bureaucratic priceof progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as offspringsof leadership, the 'disenchantment' of the modern worldtogether with the never-ending power of religion, the antagonisticrelation between intellectualism and eroticism: all these are keyconcepts which attest to the enduring fascination of Weber'sthinking.
The tremendous influence exerted by Max Weber was due not only tothe power of his ideas but also to the fact that behind histheories one perceived a man with a marked character and a tragicdestiny. However, for nearly 80 years, our understanding of thelife of Max Weber was dominated by the biography published in 1926by his widow, Marianne Weber. The lack of a great Weber biographywas one of the strangest and most glaring gaps in the literature ofthe social sciences. For various reasons the task was difficult;time and again, attempts to write a new biography of Max Weberended in failure.
When Joachim Radkau's biography appeared in Germany in 2005it caused a sensation. Based on an abundance of previously unknownsources and richly embedded in the German history of the time, thisis the first fully comprehensive biography of Max Weber ever toappear. Radkau brings out, in a way that no one has ever donebefore, the intimate interrelations between Weber's thoughtand his life experience. He presents detailed revelations about thegreat enigmas of Weber's life: his suffering and eroticexperiences, his fears and his desires, his creative power and hismethods of work as well as his religious experience and hisrelation to nature and to death. By understanding the great dramaof his life, we discover a new Max Weber, until now unknown in manyrespects, and, at the same time, we gain a new appreciation of hiswork.
Joachim Radkau, born in 1943, is Professor of Modern History atthe Bielefeld University, Germany. His interest in Max Weber datesback nearly forty years when he worked together with theGerman-American historian George W. F. Hallgarten (Washington), arefugee who left Germany in 1933 and who, as a student, listened toWeber's last lecture in summer 1920. Radkau's mainworks include Die deutsche Emigration in den USA (1971); DeutscheIndustrie und Politik (together with G. W. F. Hallgarten, 1974),Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Atomwirtschaft (1983), Technik inDeutschland (1989), Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (1998), Naturund Macht: Eine Weltgeschichte der Umwelt (2000).