Max Weber: A Biography - Couverture rigide

Radkau, Joachim

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0745641474 ISBN 13 : 9780745641478

Editeur : Polity Press, 2009

Synopsis

Book by Radkau Joachim

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

" Max Weber: A Biography is studded with sparklingobservations on topics ranging from German academia to zoology, andthe references to primary and secondary literature are trulyencyclopedic."
The Journal of The Review of Politics

"No serious sociologist can be without a copy of this heavytome. Artfully translated by Patrick Camiller, the study ishypnotic reading, beautifully written, lively, stimulating, andwonderfully well organized. No review could do justice to theplethora of new insights into Weber that emerge in this study,which will keep specialists happy in controversy for years tocome."
Canadian Journal of Sociology

"Radkau has provided a comprehensive, authoritative, balancedand nuanced view of the man we have come to know as the conflicted,driven, enigmatic genius of 10th–century modernity."
Sociology

"This absorbing and meticulously researched biography ...recounts a complex, moving story."
Book of the week in the Times Higher Education

"Radkau′s exceptional book brings out the relations betweenWeber′s thought and his life experience. There are sensationalrevelations about Weber′s suffering and eroticism, his fears anddesires, and his great creative power."
Lancashire Evening Post

"The reader is in for an exciting time, but also an agreeableone, since Radkau has an easy, relaxed style, and has been fluentlyand serviceably translated."
Times Literary Supplement

"Radkau′s biography takes great advantage of the archivedocumentation and of the family correspondence made available byGuenther Roth′s enormous 2001 effort."
The Philosophers′ Magazine

"Joachim Radkau is the first biographer to bring the greatsocial thinker Max Weber to life. He reveals what others tried toconceal: the emotional turmoil suffered by the champion ofrationality."
Lord Dahrendorf

"In this remarkable and engaging study, Joachim Radkauinvestigates the life, loves, and intellectual passions of one ofthe early twentieth century s most engagingthinkers. Capturing both the tumultuous times and the singularaccomplishments of Max Weber, the author has written a spirited andpenetrating account of the creative life that is perhaps unrivaledin its provocative originality. Based on impeccable documentation,the result is a striking portrait of the eros of the intellect, ofscientific work in relation to personality. Radkau′s impressiveachievement is certain to provoke a passionate response of itsown."
Lawrence A. Scaff, Wayne State University

"A minor social–scientific scoop ... By any standards, this isan important work."
Peter Thomas, New Left Review

"Despite the immense Weber industry, until now we had nobiographical account of this quality."
Hans Joas, Merkur

"An amazing, breath–taking book."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"A brilliant achievement."
Süddeutsche Zeitung

"I read every sentence of Radkau s Weber ... Amust–read."
Michael Greven, Neue Politische Literatur

Quatrième de couverture :

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).

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Polity Press
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0745641474
• ISBN 13: 9780745641478
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 700