For Weber is recognized widely as one of the most incisive and stimulating books on Weber in the post-war period. Writing in defence of Weber's sociology against the criticism of academic sociology by Marxists such as Louis Althusser, Bryan Turner, a leading Weberian scholar, rejects the view that Weber's sociology is bourgeois, subjectivist and individualistic.

This Second Edition, now available in paperback, includes a new Preface which reviews the scholarship on Weber since 1981. The book also provides a survey of the strengths and weaknesses of the major sociological approaches in the post-war period.