The postmodern challenge to the rationalist paradigm long regnant in American higher education has shaken the foundations of the secular academy, opening it up to a diversity of voices hitherto unheard. Under this new dispensation, Alan Wolfe observers, “Room can be made for any group, including conservative Christians” (“The Opening of the Evangelical Mind,” Atlantic Monthly [October 2000]: 76). Various Christian scholars have indeed received at least a hearing—if not a welcome—in this more open atmosphere. The work of historians, such as Mark Noll and George Marsden, and philosophers, such as Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, has commanded national attention in secular academic circles; they have brought a distinctively Christian voice to their discipline.

Until recently space was a highly suspect concept in political theory. The linguistic turn that has dominated the discipline for the past 20 years has multiple roots. Derrida's critique of pure presence, Foucault's discourse analysis, and Habermas's communicative action, in different ways, contributed to an emphasis on language over place. Recent work in geography and cultural studies, however, has begun to reserve this trend.

What can Marx and Marxian theory teach us about environmental problems and their possible solutions? One view is: not much, except about how not to think about the natural world and human beings' place in it. Marx himself sometimes spoke in the hubristic nineteenth-century idiom of the coming human “mastery” or “conquest” or “pacification” of nature, and most self-described Marxists have assumed that human happiness and social harmony go hand in hand with the human domination of nature. This interpretation of Marxian theory, when put into practice, has produced ecologically disastrous results of the sort described in depressing detail in Judith Shapiro's (2000) Mao's War Against Nature. But there is another way to read Marx that leads to altogether different conclusions, as we see in the work of Alfred Schmidt (The Concept of Nature in Marx, 1971), Howard Parsons (Marx and Engels on Ecology, 1977), Reiner Grundmann (Marxism and Ecology, 1991), and now in Jonathan Hughes's Ecology and Historical Materialism.

Religion and politics is a burgeoning subfield. Liberalism–communitarian literature now includes attention to religious communities. Theorists of civil society recognize that religious organizations implement a considerable range of policies. Since pluralism entails the presence of multiple voices in public conversation, theorists debate how a liberal society should treat religious voices. Theorists within religious traditions debate the bearing of faith on political action and the extent to which churches should cooperate with state institutions.

Mahdi's book marks a watershed in scholarship on medieval political philosophy. For the specialist, chapter 5, on the Book of Religion, alone would be worth the price of the book as a whole. The same could be said for the most synoptic chapter, chapter 7. For the more general reader and, especially, the teacher of political philosophy, the introductory section of the book will prove to be an indispensable resource. Introductions to medieval Islamic philosophy have appeared in great profusion in recent years. Part One of this book constitutes the best introduction to medieval Islamic political philosophy and may do the same for Islamic philosophy as a whole. Until now, no one has explained sufficiently why the first truly great efflorescence of philosophy within the Islamic world should be so deeply political. The peculiar character of this founding of medieval Islamic (political) philosophy has much to do with the relative inattention to Alfarabi in Western scholarship, despite his towering role in medieval Islamic and Jewish thought. With this book, we have reason to hope that Alfarabi will begin to garner the attention he deserves.

The edited volume Politics, Philosophy, Writing attempts to contribute to the reinterpretation of Plato's dialogues by clarifying some issues they addressed. In each chapter the author attempts to expand on specific mystical, poetic, or political themes in individual dialogues that have not previously received enough treatment. For example, Leon Craig elaborates on the politic elements of Plato's Meno, a dialogue usually considered a primarily epistemological work. This reinterpretation of Plato tries to overcome some of the recent misuse of Plato by modern and postmodern thinkers that has resulted in Plato being reduced to “a footnote in the works of other philosophers” (p. 1). The authors of Politics, Philosophy, Writing succeed in raising some interesting issues in the dialogues and refuting several prevalent misconceptions as they detail Plato's attention to caring for souls.

Interpreting the entire body of work of a political theorist as prolific as James Madison is a dicey matter. Perhaps more than any other American of his intellectual stature, James Madison can be viewed as shifting ideological positions throughout his long and active life. Reputable scholars such as Marvin Meyers (1973), in his Introduction to The Mind of the Founder, Ralph Ketcham (1971), in James Madison: A Biography, and Douglas Jaenicke's (“Madison vs Madison: The Party Essays v. The Federalist Papers”), in Maidment and Zvesper's (1989) Reflections on the Constitution, have argued with some effectiveness that it is difficult to garner a consistent set of philosophical positions throughout Madison's life. Other scholars, however, such as Lance Banning (1995), in The Sacred Fire of Liberty, Drew McCoy (1980), in The Elusive Republic, and Richard Matthews (1995), in If Men Were Angels, make a case for a more consistent Madison who, although altering positions on specifics, remained remarkably dedicated to a set of core philosophical positions.

Rarely does a political science book undertake the simultaneous task of contributing to both scholarship and activism. This edited volume explores the theory and practice of social movements, examining “success” stories, such as the struggle for women's suffrage in the United States, as well as “failures,” embodied in this case by an ill-conceived attempt to carry out a charity program in early 1990s Russia. This lens on the lived realities of activism makes it an instructive and unusual book. The volume also discusses how feminist theory and practices influence social movements and power relations. The explicit intention of the editors is to contribute to theory-building, as well as to help design more effective activism. To that end, the contributors include social change activists as well as academics, several of whom combine both identities.

It is a testimony to his greatness as an author that Tocqueville has emerged in a new light with each of the more significant events of the twentieth century: the New Deal, the Cold War, the Post-War years. In the last decade, in particular, American scholars of all political persuasions have seen in Tocqueville a point of departure for their consideration of the rudiments of robust democracy and the associational life it seems to require. Democracy perhaps being the only genuine alternative for the future, American scholars have tried to learn from Tocqueville what might be necessary to make it thrive, in places where the political alternatives have been exhausted and the rhetoric, but not yet the substance, of democracy now prevails. In a race to establish democracy before the rhetoric of democracy becomes a hollow caricature, Tocqueville studies have had an urgency about them that the study of other canonical figures in the history of modern political thought—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc—simply have not. We shall see, of course, whether the Post-War years were merely a hiatus and whether we more properly live in an Inter-War period, perhaps in perpetuity. We shall see, as well, whether the recent military confrontations in Afghanistan are able to be contained under the category of politics rather than of religion. Whatever the future holds, however, we can be sure that the writings of Tocqueville will not be exhausted by the events whose outlines we cannot yet foresee. Tocqueville had a great deal to say about war and, most readers may be surprised to discover, a few very interesting and provocative things to say about Islam as well. But these matters, as I say, must wait for the future.

Puerto Rico has often fallen between the cracks of the subfloor that undergirds not only the study of American politics but also the field of political science in general. Although it has certain nation state-like properties, the fact that it is not a nation state de jure means that those who study international and inter-American relations have given it little attention. This also holds true for Latin American comparativists, who treat it as one of the many small and nonindependent territories that dot the Caribbean. If it had been incorporated into the federal structure of the United States, it would be studied by those within the field of American government who focus on comparative state politics. But its special status as a semiautonomous commonwealth prevents this from happening.

Cities' pursuit of economic development activities sits at the interstices of the economic marketplace and political power. Private-sector investment is not realized in a power vacuum; political institutional and politicians' behavior influence, alter, and in many ways determine the kind and location of those private investment decisions. It is no wonder, then, that both economists and political scientists have much to say about the efficiency, effectiveness, equity, and impact of urban economic development. And it is no wonder that volumes have been written on the vast array of urban development projects from a comparative or idiosyncratic perspective. Attracting the quadrennial Olympic games is no exception. Matthew Burbank, Gregory Andranovich, and Charles Heying have performed an impressive task of compiling documents and accounts on the politics and economics surrounding the successful efforts of Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City in luring the Olympics to their cities and regions.

Everybody seems to talk about accountability but no one ever does anything about it, Robert Behn argues in this thought-provoking book. This is scarcely due to a lack of enough overseers. Behn rattles off the innumerable “accountability holders”—including the GAO, lawyers, journalists, and inspectors general—who dish it out while the wretched public administrators take it. These accountability adversaries exclusively pursue either accountability for finances or accountability for fairness, doling out punishments where rules are inadequately met and feeling no obligation to consider those performance considerations that may have driven managerial choices. Public managers may be confronted by an “accountability dilemma” in pondering the trade-offs between finances and fairness and performance, but that is not the accountability holder's problem.

Nothing energizes a field of study more than a revolution. The explosion of new forms of mass communication is just such a revolution for the field of political communication, to judge by this volume. As its 22 chapters demonstrate, profound changes in the technology and institutions of mass media have prompted a wide-ranging and stimulating effort to document, interpret, and theorize.

Both the books under review deal with the development of a distinctly American political tradition of liberalism and liberal democracy and its relationship to the thorny issue of racial slavery. However, the authors employ very different means to explore this common goal. While David Ericson, as in his previous work, concentrates on the level of national politics, James Simeone examines the local political culture of “bottomland republicanism” in early Illinois.

George A. Gonzalez has authored a lucid and well-written book with a sharp thesis. He challenges the conventional claim that environmental policy is “an oasis of democracy” by developing a series of case studies to demonstrate that “members of the nation's economic elite—corporate decision-makers and other individuals of substantial wealth—are the dominant influences in the formation and development of U.S. environmental policies” (p. ix). In constructing his theoretical argument, Gonzalez combines G. William Domhoff's method of power structure analysis with James Weinstein's and others' historical analysis of corporate liberalism.

The overriding theme of this very insightful work from distinguished presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein is stated in the opening pages: “The United States is said to have a government of laws and institutions rather than individuals, but as these examples remind us, it is one in which the matter of who occupies the nation's highest office can have profound repercussions” (p. 2). Greenstein's analysis of presidential leadership styles from FDR to Clinton corroborates his theme by demonstrating the extent to which the aggrandizement of the presidency since the New Deal has left the American polity at the mercy of the skills and personalities of the holders of the office. As Greenstein himself points out (p. 3) parliamentary systems, with their more collective leadership, place more partisan and institutional constraints on the head of government. In contrast, the centrality of the presidency to the American system of government since the New Deal and the extent to which the institution is driven by the individual style of respective officeholders provide a recurrent and pervasive element of instability in American national government. Yet this very instability is also perhaps the office's most useful attribute. In a system characterized largely by gridlock it provides intermittent and necessary innovation and dynamism. The presidency's' greatest shortcoming, its highly protean nature, is also, ironically, its greatest value as a political institution.

Lisa Keister's work offers students of research methods, and of public policy, an ideal model. It also offers, albeit indirectly, a study that should inform policy makers as they discuss proposals to alter inheritance and estate tax policies and privatize Social Security. Wealth in America explores the distribution of household resources from 1962 through 1995. Questions regarding the distribution of wealth in the United States are seldom addressed directly because readily available data do not permit a straightforward approach. Because it is easier to deal with questions related to the distribution of income than with the distribution of wealth, research generally focuses on income distribution and we assume that there is a relatively straightforward relationship between the two. Keister tackles the data problems associated with measuring household assets allowing her to evaluate the distribution of wealth. Since measuring assets at any point in time is a challenge, it is all the more remarkable that she is able to examine changes in the distribution of household assets over time.

Research on political movements remains peripheral to the discipline of political science, or, to put it more optimistically, outstanding research on political movements has relied upon interdisciplinary and intersubfield research strategies and is building an increasing presence within the discipline. The importance and emergence of this arena of scholarship make it difficult not to celebrate Christine Kelly's Tangled Up in Red, White, and Blue, a work that offers a synthesis of political theory and empirical political movement research, employing comparative case studies of several new social movements in the United States.

In this case study of the 1990 Red Apple Boycott of two Korean-owned produce stores in Brooklyn, New York, Claire Kim narrates a complex story of resurgent Black Nationalism, the rise of Korean resistance to blacks, and the fateful temporizing of Mayor David Dinkins, whose belated crossing of the boycott picket lines deeply injured his mayoralty. Kim has high ambitions in telling this story; she wishes to use it to displace a flawed “racial scapegoating” theory of black–Korean relations and to advance in its stead her own theory of “racial ordering” in the United States.

Why do policymakers in any one given jurisdiction choose one approach rather than another for dealing with the common public policy challenge of deciding how to revise state and provincial automobile insurance regulatory regimes? And even within any one specific political jurisdiction (of a North American subnational “universe” of 50 states plus 10 provinces), why do policy outcomes change over time? What determines legislative policy decisions?