This major study of the father of modern sociology explores the intimate relationship between the events of Max Weber's personal history and the development of his thought. When it was first published in 1970, Paul Roazen described The Iron Cage as -an example of the history of ideas at its very best-; while Robert A. Nisbet said that -we learn more about Weber's life in this volume than from any other in the English language.-

Weber's life and work developed in reaction to the rigidities of familial and social structures in Imperial Germany. In his youth he was torn by...