The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism »

Max Weber (1864-1920) was a key figure in the development of the social sciences and wrote many works in the fields of sociology, politics, economics and law. In the course of his career he taught at the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg and Munich.
Stephen Kalberg is Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University. He is the co-chair of the German Study Group at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, and the author of Max Weber's Comparative-Historical Sociology (Polity Press, 1994).

In what is arguably one of the most famous and influential works of sociology and is certainly Weber's most famous, he argued that Calvinist asceticism helped sow the seeds of capitalism by promoting selfless labor and restricting material consumption. This edition is an unabridged republication of the 1958 English translation published by Charles Scribner's Sons. Cited in Books for College Libraries, 3rd ed. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Times Higher Education Supplement

Max Weber is the one undisputed canonical figure in contemporary sociology.