The 1994 elections were watershed elections in several respects. Perhaps most significantly, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1953. In the process, the 1994 elections also swept into office a large, relatively homogeneous group of 73 House Republican freshmen determined to change the political system. With size comes an opportunity for power in Congress, and the 73 Republican freshmen elected in 1994 were determined to exert considerable influence over the legislative process. Not since the 1974 elections produced the 76 freshmen Democrats (i.e., the Watergate Babies) have political scientists focused so much attention on a single class of legislators. Timothy Barnett's Legislative Learning is a nice complement to similar books already written about this interesting group of legislators, including Richard Fenno and Michael Armacost's Learning to Govern: An Institutional View of the 104th Congress (1997) and Nicol Rae's Conservative Reformers: The Republican Freshmen and the Lessons of the 104th Congress (1998).

Robert Kagan has three main objectives in writing this book: to demonstrate that the American systems of criminal and civil law, social welfare, and environmental regulation are dominated by “adversarial legalism,” to critique and explain why it has taken hold in the United States, and to make proposals for reform in light of findings in the United States and the advanced capitalist nations of Europe, the Commonwealth, and Japan.

In 1946, Congress passed the Administrative Procedure and Legislative Reorganization Act. In this legislation, Congress purposefully provided for itself a prominent role in the administration of the federal government. David Rosenbloom writes that the “… purpose of this book is to explain how and why Congress adopted that role, its underlying coherence, [and] its durability … for seemingly ever-increasing congressional involvement in federal administration …” (p. ix). The author maintains that Congress was uneasy about this endeavor but was forced by the “federal administrative state” to reposition itself. Some even believed that Congress' place in the constitutional scheme-of-things had been altered. For example, it was asserted that Congress was abandoning constitutional principle if it allowed unelected governmental administrators to make rules (i.e., administrative law). The 1946 legislation has resulted in a merger between Congress and the federal bureaucracy. The author contends that federal agencies became “extensions” of Congress' authority to make law. In addition, this legislation resulted in the view that the administration of the bureaucracy was no longer to be seen as the private preserve of the executive branch of government. The concept of “legislative-centered public administration” is used to describe the results of this legislation.

In this history of American trade politics, James Shoch argues for the centrality of political parties in the making of trade policy. His thesis, simply stated, is that parties matter, and matter a good deal more than the literature generally acknowledges. As he depicts it, the historical record is something like a heavyweight prizefight, in which the Democratic and Republican Parties, driven by constituency pressures, ideological differences, and, especially, the quest for political advantage, spar ceaselessly over trade issues.

Rogan Kersh's ambitious and well-researched book traces the history of the concept of American national “union” from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, when the concept lost the peculiar force it had had and fell out of use (more or less replaced by such concepts as “nation,” “country,” and, especially, “America”). The analysis demonstrates how the concept of national union has been used in exclusive as well as inclusive ways. The subject is an important one, especially to an America united by terrorist threats. And it is a topic made more conspicuous in the last decade by our ongoing discourse over multiculturalism. So the concept of national union is perhaps less obscure and more relevant than Kersh suggests (p. 3). Connections to the recent work of Rogers Smith (Civic Ideals, 1997) are also apparent. Still, the term itself has been out of favor for about a century now, so Kersh's study is a welcome effort to get us thinking about a relatively novel topic.

Uncertain Hazards is an ambitious book, in two respects. First, it tackles an important issue for political science as well as sociology and history, namely, the impact that social movements have on reshaping the societies in which they mobilize. Second, in adopting a case study approach to this issue, the author explores the development of the modern environmental movement and its purported reframing or hegemonic reversal of environmental science and risk assessment in America. In effect, this volume is two separate but related studies. Indeed, Sylvia Noble Tesh suggests as much when she notes in her acknowledgments that her “theme shifted as the book took shape” (p. xi).

Steven E. Schier's latest book, The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton's Legacy in U.S. Politics, provides a much-needed assessment of the Clinton presidency. Throughout the eight years of the Clinton administration, surprisingly few scholarly books were written that either assessed presidential performance or examined the political implications of the Clinton presidency. The few books that did emerge from the Clinton era focus on impeachment and on Mrs. Clinton, most in a less than scholarly way. Steven Schier has begun to fill this scholarly void by putting together an edited volume that examines both performance and political repercussions of the Clinton presidency. This volume of 12 articles offers perspectives on the domestic, international, and economic policies of the administration. The contributors are all well-known scholars in presidential research and all have written significantly within their fields (i.e., domestic policy, international relations, electoral politics, etc.). Schier's choice of contributors is excellent and ensures substantial command of the subject matter within the chapters.

Scholars have long been participant-observers in presidential transitions, which provide extraordinary opportunities to refine their understanding of continuity and change in the presidency. Political science, more generally, has benefited from this engagement. Whether we read the elegant memoranda of Richard Neustadt or the advice-laden briefing papers of the White House 2001 Project, we gain a new appreciation for the challenges confronting a chief executive who must build an administration, establish a policy agenda, and achieve demonstrable political results within a few short months of the election. In Presidential Transitions, From Politics to Practice, John Burke makes a notable contribution to our knowledge of these events, both as historical drama and as political developments. Quite simply, this book can be enjoyed for its narrative and appreciated for its analysis by those interested in presidential institutions and policymaking.

A not uncommon complaint concerning social choice models is that they tend to assume away everything of interest, leaving a model with little relation to the real world. The usual response is that one must start with the basic elements of a problem before moving to more complex and inclusive models. Unfortunately, few social choice models applied to legal studies have achieved sufficient complexity to be of significant value. Maxwell Stearns recognizes this problem and, in Constitutional Process, systematically presents a comprehensive social choice model and applies it to a complex legal doctrine.

It was New York Governor Al Smith's famous dictum that the ills of democracy could be solved with more democracy. Many agree with him some 75 years later. The shelves of political science overflow with books lamenting the decline of intermediary institutions that once plugged the hearts and minds of citizens into government and civic life. Democracy scaled down to the town and neighborhood allows people to address problems that are experienced in the routine of everyday life. Stripped of abstraction, politics loses its mystery and the sense of alienation that accompanies it. But Americans no longer gather at the political club, the town meeting, the church, and the union hall. Citizens are plugged into television, the family, or perhaps the job, interested in private concerns. In response, pundits, professors, and politicians call for a revival of local political and civic life. President George W. Bush's “Faith-Based Initiative,” which would use federal funds to support church social service programs, can be viewed as a response to the national mood of a people adrift. While many have forwarded tiresome critiques of what ails us, Kenneth Thomson does the nitty-gritty empirical work that should mark social science's unique contribution to this debate.

In recent decades, roughly 25 percent of major bills considered by the U.S. Congress have been omnibus measures—large, often unwieldy, legislative vehicles that touch on multiple policy areas. The 1981 reconciliation bill, which included much of President Reagan's economic agenda, is perhaps the best-known example. But many important policy proposals, from crime control to welfare reform, have passed as part of omnibus legislation.

With the Supreme Court decision in Easley v. Cromartie, the 1990s round of redistricting litigation came to an end just in time for the new decade's round to commence. Looking back upon the Court decisions from the 1990s as well as the extensive scholarly commentary on them, anyone new to the field of voting rights in the United States might wonder how the Voting Rights Act, which was a straightforward attempt to remedy indisputably unjust political practices, could have given rise to the I-85 district in North Carolina.

A sense of puzzlement is likely to be the first reaction to Ethan Fishman's book. Aristotle and presidential leadership? These are topics that we tend not to associate with each other. Yet, as Fishman makes clear in this admirable and provocative work, Aristotle had much to say about proper political leadership, much that is directly applicable to evaluating and understanding American presidents and their acts of leadership.

Analysts of religion and American politics have been awaiting this book for some time. In The Great Divide, Geoffrey Layman brings together two strands of research in American political behavior in an elegant, systematic fashion: the study of party system change (often described as the literature on “party realignment”) and the analysis of religion in politics in the United States (long something of an esoteric speciality within political science). While Layman is not first to address the connection between the pew and the precinct, his impressive effort is at this point the authoritative source on religion and contemporary party politics.

There is an unfortunate tendency for much public policy analysis to be ahistorical in its perspective. A program or policy is evaluated in terms of its success or failure in achieving its stated goals, and only the most immediate social, political, and economic factors are brought into the analysis to explain policy outcomes. In the case of public housing in the United States, an analysis of its failure to meet its stated goal of providing decent housing for the poor might lead us to blame (1) the federal government for poor design of the program, (2) local governments for poor implementation, or (3) the recipients themselves for engaging in antisocial behavior that undermined the intent of the program.

Death and the Statesman appeared in print one month after the terrorist attacks on September 11, and the timing of its publication alone might attract a wide audience. The book deals with a significant subject of immediate interest to scholars and citizens alike—namely, what drives political leaders as they decide when and how to conduct war. Joseph Underhill-Cady argues that members of the foreign policymaking elite remain preoccupied with their own mortality. He suggests how their metaphors and rituals reveal their persistent fear and high anxiety about death, and he shows how their decisions to go to war can be read to reflect this preoccupation. For the foreign policy elite, the conduct of war constitutes an “immortality project.” According to the author, “As the elite sought to overcome their physical limitations, they likewise attempted to ensure the nation's transcendence of its mortal bounds” (p. 10). Underhill-Cady notes the gender-specific nature of foreign policymaking (p. 45). Macho men deny the inevitability of their own deaths and suppress their emotions, while they labor to ensure that the nation shall long endure. He traces the roots of their immortality projects to the Christian tradition: Man has fallen, but he can achieve salvation and thereby gain eternal life (pp. 52–55). The author renders a plausible, thought-provoking argument, although the evidence he produces could be more convincing.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s produced strong pressure on all levels of government to give “power to the people.” This urgent demand came not only from radical activists in the streets but also from the halls of academia, where scholars churned out a massive volume of studies encompassing detailed recommendations for filling the power vacuum between authoritative public and private decision makers and disadvantaged citizens whose lack of sufficient economic and political resources condemned them to the bottom rungs of the American social order. Although most of these studies were considered positive and progressive, they were not without their detractors. The most searing critique of “bottom up” schemes for empowering the disadvantaged has come from the pen of Robert Weissberg in his book, The Politics of Empowerment.

Rarely is one invited to see the ingredients that go into the sausage, and if one plans only to eat sausage, this is an ideal situation. But the only way to make sausage is to take a close look at these ingredients, blemishes and all. Despite modeling shortcomings and disagreements that are evident among the authors, Elements of Reason is a remarkable book, both for its instructional value and the insight it offers into one of the most important problems in the social sciences.

It has been more than forty years since the publication of Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (1960). In that seminal work Neustadt rebuffed systemic, legal, and constitutional approaches to emphasize the personal basis of presidential power and the centrality of presidents' reputation and persuasive skills. Michael Genovese's book and the collection assembled by Shapiro, Kumar, and Jacobs are timely and useful additions to the reevaluation of the individual and institutional bases of presidential power, influence, and leadership across time. If scholarship on the presidency is at a crossroads, these works invite us to journey in different analytical directions.

Why would any legislator in the U.S. House of Representatives invest the time and energy to pass good public policy? This simple question drives Gregory Wawro's investigation of legislative entrepreneurship, which he defines as “invest[ing] time, staff, and other resources to acquire knowledge of particular policy areas, draft[ing] legislation addressing issues in those areas, and shepherd[ing] their proposals through the legislative process by building and maintaining coalitions” (p. 2). His introduction and description of the puzzle are exemplary. His answer, unfortunately, is wanting.