Realino Marra’s recent book on Weber’s theories about Capitalism (Capitalismo e anticapitalismo in Max Weber. Storia di Roma e sociologia del diritto nella genesi dell’opera weberiana, Bologna 2002) has one great merit: it pursues a dual purpose. One is to show that Max Weber’s youthful writings were already inspired by the fundamental problems that were later to provide a unitary guide to his entire research: the destiny that capitalism, by then dominant, reserved for mankind on the one hand and Germany on the other. The other is to identify the cultural and political orientation of a man who felt that his political and scientific task was to tackle these two problems that for him were inescapable.

Francesco Belvisi, in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 3/2003, pp. , DOI: