Huff sees science as a social practice which cannot flourish without a social niche for the person who would investigate nature, and covers a long span of history looking at the ways societies create or fail to create those social roles. I have read a good many books on this subject, and Huff's is the most fair-minded, cogent and satisfying. Recommend highly.

This is an informative set of essays by scholars who might be described as "Orientalists" or "neo-Orientalists" on Weber and Islam, bringing useful balance to Bryan Turner's 1974 work. Almost half of the book is taken up by Huff's introductory essay and Schlucter's essay "Hindrances to Modernity: Max Weber and Islam." The remaining contributions tend to be relatively brief. Crone on law and the rise of capitalism is among the better; several essays (Peters, Metcalf, and Cook) touch on the presence or absence of dissenting movements within Islam that might or might not play a role similar to that ascribed by Weber to Calvinism in the rise of capitalism in Western Europe.