Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics. By Carol Lancaster. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. 284p. $50.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

This book addresses an important issue—namely, why governments give aid—and offers a comparison of five countries since 1945: the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Denmark. Each country occupies its own chapter, with systematic comparison being assisted by a common set of headings relating to the main domestic sources of influence: ideas, institutions, interests, and government organization. Two opening chapters set the stage and offer a brief history of aid's purposes. A rather short concluding chapter sums up the findings. No other book has the same agenda. Carol Lancaster's analysis benefits greatly from her position as an “insider” for 13 years on and off in the U.S. government, working on aid issues, and from the opportunity to interview around a hundred aid officials and expert commentators in the five countries during 2002–3.