Max Weber was one of the founding figures of sociology. His work is important to students of communication for several reasons, including his methodological and theoretical innovations as well as a diversity of useful concepts and examples for the analysis of social behavior, economic organization and administration, authority, leadership, culture, society, and politics.

Weber grew up in Berlin, where his father was a lawyer and politicians and scholars were family friends. He studied law, economics, history, and philosophy at the universities in Heidelberg, Göttingen, and Berlin. He taught law briefly at the University of Berlin and became professor of economics at Freiberg in 1894 and then at Heidelberg in 1896. Depression and anxiety interrupted his career in 1898. He returned to his research in 1903 but did not hold another teaching post until just a few years prior to his death. All of his important work comes...