Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth. By Michael J. Graetz and Ian Shapiro. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 392p. $29.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro ask an intriguing question: “Why would anyone who could see straight imagine that a tax paid by only 2 percent of the wealthiest Americans [the estate tax] could be abolished?” (p. 12). But legislation in 2001 did just that, at least temporarily. (If Congress does not act again, however, the estate tax, scheduled to expire in 2010, will revive in 2011.)