He is well-known for his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), a comparative study of modernization in Britain, France, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and India.

[2] In 1941, Moore obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University where he studied with Albert Galloway Keller.

[2] Moore's students at Harvard included comparative social scientists Theda Skocpol and Charles Tilly, urban sociologist John Mollenkopf,[7] as well as historian Jon Wiener.

[8] While working at the OSS, Moore met his future wife, Elizabeth Ito, and Herbert Marcuse, who became a lifelong friend.

In the book Moore argues that academic research and society in general should adopt a strictly scientific and secular outlook and approach theories and conjectures with empirical verification.