Book Reviews 273 Donald N. Levine, Social Theory as in Sociology (New Brunswick, NJ: pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-1-4128-5502It is always painful to read on the still referred to in present tense, on into the past. Whatever lingu this case will take a long time to as a Vocation is ample proof of th point. Donald N. Levine died on April 4,2015. This makes Social Theory as a Vocation his last book. It is a worthy conclusion of a lifetime of work on rejuvenating, or indeed resurrecting, the genre of socio logical theory. His previous books, including Visions of the Sociologi cal Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and The Flight From Ambiguity (University of Chicago Press, 1985) focused on the interac tion between the classics of social theory and contemporary research practice. Social Theory as a Vocation offers a balanced picture of his approach, including 24 essays, all of which but one had been pre viously published between 1968 and 2013 in journals and collected volumes, as well as five appendices. Levine split his attention into two domains of work in social theory, which he described as 'custodial' and 'heuristic', the latter operating either internally or externally to the discipline of sociol ogy. Custodial work he described as involving 'the critical recovery of texts that are not ready at hand', including translation, publica tion of previously unpublished materials and new critical editions, but also 'critical reappraisal of extant efforts to recover and to inter pret important texts' (1). The first part of the book is composed of nine chapters, the seventh of which ('Revisiting Georg Simmel') is a previously unpublished attempt to introduce 'intellectual order' (2) into Simmelian variety. Reading this part leaves no doubt what soever that Levine was one of the most prominent custodians of the sociological tradition in American scholarship. True, he did not divide his attention equally between all the pioneers of sociology. He also took comparatively little notice of poor souls cast in support ing roles or acting beyond the mainstream spectacle. He worked pre dominantly on an elite grouping of German, French, and American key figures. But one man cannot be expected to guard all the cher ished relics of disciplinary glory. As a custodian, Levine strived to make the sociological tradition dear and available to the American© Max Weber Studies 2015. 274 Max Weber Studies academic public, and this goal can best with the most time-resistant authors and works. A custodian is not a historian, even though they may have much in common. Historical interest is less pronounced in the heuristic theory work internal to sociology, which comes to the fore in the second part. Sociological heuristic is exemplified by eight essays, all of which are meant to 'provide productive concepts, conceptual frameworks, and general propositions' (103). Some of them go further than that, touching on two areas which Levine found 'terribly important and relatively neglected, the task of theorizing new areas of inquiry and creating new frames for dealing with old issues' (104). The last chapter in this part draws on Levine's prolific and in some respects groundbreaking work on Ethiopia to analyze the idea of modern nationhood—a problematic to which he returns in the final part of the book. The other concepts discussed in this part include the most contested theoretical inventions of the modern era, such as cul tural integration, organicism, rationality, freedom, and—last but not least—modernity itself. This part is governed by the order of problem-solving and not by historical interdependencies of names and genealogies, and paves the way for the book's finale, devoted to 'heuristic theory work external to the discipline' (251). The evidence of this intellectual endeavor encompasses seven essays. Contrary to the two previous parts, which provide the reader with an excellent opportunity to enhance his or her grasp of the great classical social theorists, this final part is not (or: not primar ily) about science, but about reality. Levine proposes to read real ity through the lens and with the aid of sociological heuristics. Each of these essays is a valuable illustration of how the author intended to 'engage domains in which sociology is...