Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds: Universities, Leadership, and the Development of the American State. By Mark R. Nemec. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 312p. $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The end of the Civil War ushered a new era in American state-building as the government sought to reshape the structure and identity of politics, group formation, and individual identity. During this period, nongovernmental agencies became central to disseminating and legitimating state authority. Although universities have been recognized as influential agencies, Mark R. Nemec argues that prior works overlooked the process by which they gained this influence. In Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds, Nemec illuminates the rise of American universities as active partners and independent agents of state building from 1862 to 1920. Universities provided services to national development through promoting democratic ideals, industrial competitiveness, and intellectual vanguardism. Primarily through the “institutional entrepreneurship” of university presidents, American universities rapidly expanded their role and influence in society. Rather than the government, it was the university leaders who took the leading role to define what their universities would become.