Max Weber is widely regarded as one of the foundational thinkers of the twentieth century. But how did this reclusive German scholar manage to leave such an indelible mark on modern political and social thought? Max Weber in Politics and Social Thought is the first comprehensive account of Weber's wide-ranging impact on both German and American intellectuals. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Joshua Derman illuminates what Weber meant to contemporaries in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany and analyzes why they reached for his concepts to articulate such widely divergent understandings of modern life. The book also accounts for the transformations that Weber's concepts underwent at the hands of émigré and American scholars, and in doing so, elucidates one of the major intellectual movements of the mid-twentieth century: the transatlantic migration of German thought.

'Joshua Derman’s wonderful new study … attempts something that (to my knowledge, at least) has not been attempted before. His book not only provides an overview of Weber’s thought, concerns, and historical context but also tells the complicated story of how his fragmentary writings were posthumously turned into the ‘collected works' … The strange story of the sea change undergone by ‘charisma’ is alone worth the price of admission to Derman’s study. Like the rest of the book it leaves one with an enhanced understanding of the contingencies, misunderstandings, and institutional vagaries that Weber encountered on his posthumous road to canonization.'

Dana Villa Source: Perspectives on Politics

'… an erudite intellectual history of Weber’s reception - based on a remarkably comprehensive mastery of all of Weber’s major texts and the voluminous German and American secondary literatures … Derman’s history refreshes our view of Weber’s entire oeuvre, highlighting the differences national, generational, ideological, and disciplinary boundaries made to Weber interpretation.'

Matthew Specter Source: Central European History

'This is a lucidly written book that anyone interested in Weber, twentieth-century intellectual history, or the way context shapes ideas will find illuminating.'

Matthew Kadane Source: The American Historical Review

'… Derman has made a fine contribution to Weber studies when it comes to understanding the reason for Weber’s long life after life. For this book helps us recognize, once again, that Weber’s charisma survived routinization precisely because it could not be reified despite canonization.'

Sung Ho Kim Source: Review of Politics