The Idea of the State. By Peter J. Steinberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 344p. $75.00.

In the early decades of American political science and its political theory, the state was the main subject matter of the discipline. This book recalls that era (though it is situated mainly in the deeper history of political thought). As the author recognizes, its subject matter is today somewhat unfashionable in political theory. Moreover, the book's theory is first and foremost metaphyscial rather then political, thus reversing the priority that John Rawls and most other contemporary theorists proclaim. To complete his separation from contemporary theoretical currents, the kind of state advocated by Peter Steinberger is “omnicompetent in scope, absolute in authority and organic in composition” (p. xiv).