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He shows why humans have a herd instinct when it comes to investment, and why no one can accurately predict when the bulls might stampede. Life is a risky business — which is why people take out insurance.

But faced with an unexpected disaster, the state has to step in. Professor Ferguson travels to post-KatrinaNew Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide some of the adequate protection against catastrophe.

His quest for an answer takes him to the origins of modern insurance in the early 19th century and to the birth of the welfare state in post-war Japan. It sounded so simple: give state-owned assets to the people. After all, what better foundation for a property-owning democracy than a campaign of privatisation encompassing housing? An economic theory says that markets can't function without mortgages, because it's only by borrowing against their assets that entrepreneurs can get their businesses off the ground.

But what if mortgages are bundled together and sold off to the highest bidder? Niall Ferguson investigates the globalisation of the Western economy and the uncertain balance between the important component countries of China and the US. In examining the last time globalisation took hold — before World War One, he finds a notable reversal, namely that today's money is pouring into the English-speaking economies from the developing world, rather than out.

The idea of interest came about in Venice from Jewish bankers. War bonds became popular in Florence and other Italian cities. Dutch merchants became rich by purchasing spices in the East Indies and trading them in Europe. John Law rose among the ranks of French financiers and ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in France. The shares of the Mississippi Company plummeted after faith was lost in the Louisiana colonies. Financial troubles caused France to struggle for years, and then revolution began in Nathan Rothschild became successful in the bond market of England.

He then was enlisted by the British government to get gold and silver to the Duke of Wellington in preparation for ongoing war. The war eventually ended quickly, and the price of gold fell.

American Confederates developed cotton bonds to sell in England to fund their efforts in the Civil War. Once New Orleans fell to the Union, the value of Confederate cotton bonds declined. The British were shipping opium from India to China, which was against Chinese law.

The Navy crushed Chinese forces and took over Hong Kong, establishing businesses and railroads. Click Get Books and find your favorite books in the online library. Create free account to access unlimited books, fast download and ads free! Money, Money, Money. The Value of Money. Kurashige does reveal why African Americans and Japanese Americans joined forces in the battle against discrimination, and why the trajectories of the two groups later diverged.

Multicultural Los Angeles ultimately encompassed both the new prosperity arising from transpacific commerce and the enduring problem of race and class divisions, according to Kurashige. This reviewer highly recommends it. Arizona State University Matthew C. By Robert Malcomson. Annapolis, Md. To open the campaign season in the second year of the War of , Americans mounted an ambitious operation against York, the provincial capital of Upper Canada, now modern Toronto, but at the time little more than a frontier outpost.

The result was the U. In addition to a richly detailed description of the battle at York, he provides a brief history of the place and its people while clearly explaining the British mistakes that made it vulnerable. His analysis of its aftermath moves beyond the recital of military and political consequences to address the human toll exacted by the grim events of that April.

Those interested in a thorough parsing of the battle will find the lengthy appendices quite useful. Everyone will find the clear and vibrant narrative fascinating.

Malcomson describes the characters with admirable attention to detail and makes careful judgments that always incline to a refreshing charity. He corrects several myths and misconceptions that have persisted ever since the war, convinc- ingly disputing, for example, that the British attack on Washington the following year was a reprisal for York.

The book is lavishly illustrated in a pleasing format that places portraits, pictures, and maps near the text that refers to them. Of course, nothing is ever the last word on a subject, but this book comes very, very close. By Sally G. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and others, Sally G. McMillen brings the movement to life. Women were entering the workforce and institutions of higher learning in ever larger numbers by the middle of the nineteenth century, and they were committing themselves to a variety of charitable and reform causes.

Their presence in the public sphere offered up a sharp contrast to the notion that the home was the only place for a woman. McMillen explores the motives of the activists who set out to rectify the inequitable treatment of American women, noting that women like Mott and Stanton had opposed injustice most of their lives.

Their early activism prepared these women for the role they would play as crusaders on their own behalf. She examines closely the internal discord that at times threatened the movement. Much of its success, and so many of the setbacks it faced, were due to the force of personalities of the women involved. Clashes were inevitable, and disputes erupted over everything from dress reform the so-called Bloomer costume to support for the Fifteenth Amendment.

McMillen does not gloss over the petty bickering and in hindsight trivial disputes over many issues, including the compilation of a history of the movement and the proposed merger of the NWSA and the AWSA. By James M. James McPherson is widely recognized as the premier Civil War historian of his generation. Tried by War is a fine example of a book by a distinguished scholar aimed more at general readers than specialists. Its narrative covers the entire Civil War, but its focus is limited to military events and the role of Abraham Lincoln as Union commander in chief.

McPherson argues that Lincoln, who began the war with almost no military experience, overcame this handicap in part by extensive reading of military texts. Harry Williams more than fifty years ago in Lincoln and His Generals.

Indeed, as an accessible narrative written by a famous authority and aimed at those new to the field, this book is a worthy successor to that classic. Considering that many of its readers will surely be stimulated into further study of Lincoln and the war, a bibliography would have been a useful inclusion, but for that the Civil War neophyte can always move on to Battle Cry of Freedom. East Carolina University Gerald J. By Michael I. Ever since the writing of the Constitution during the summer of , Americans have struggled, at times bitterly, to identify and interpret the nature of the government created by the founders at the Philadelphia Convention.

As the struggle continues today, it is well to remember that the founders themselves engaged in a heated controversy over ratification of the new constitution, a conflict that was by no means certain of success for the supporters of the proposed government.

The author reminds readers of the critical role played by The Fed- eralist Papers not only in achieving ratification of the Constitution, but in the continuing effort to understand the nature of the government created under it. Not only must The Federalist Papers be read as a series of partisan political writings, as they most assuredly were, but also as a brilliant discourse upon, and rationale for, the new government—one which remains original and timely over two centuries later.

Michael I. Meyerson begins with an effort to place The Federalist Papers within their proper historical context, with particular attention to the roles and views of their two main authors, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Brought together by the disruptions and dislocations of the weak and ineffectual Articles of Confederation, Madison and Hamilton, though possessing markedly different personalities, temperaments, and views concerning the nature of government and the future of the new nation, developed a solid friendship as they worked to strengthen the government and save the revolution- ary experiment from collapse.

Meyerson provides an excellent account of the construction of The Federalist Papers, carefully noting and identifying the various contributions of both men, as well as the relatively few contributions of the third collaborator, John Jay.

Finally, Meyerson presents an insightful account of the subsequent deterioration of the relationship between the two men, as their basic differences quickly reemerged following ratification of the Constitution to bedevil the Wash- ington administration and create the first party system. At this point, Meyerson turns from the construction of The Federalist Papers and fast-forwards to contemporary times, presenting an original and interesting, albeit brief, discussion of how these fundamental writings have been and are being used and misused in the political battles of our own times.

Meyerson presents an important discussion of the importance of ideas in the construction of our federal government and in how these ideas remain relevant in our own time. By Scott C. West- port, Conn. This book is a fascinating guide to many of the operations of the Central Intel- ligence Agency since its creation in In Scott C.

He has made smart use of a document collection detailing CIA illegal activities, especially in the U. These records were put together in the mids because of reputed CIA involvement with Water- gate and dealt with activities during the previous twenty years.

Leaks about these records took place in the mids during the various investigations of the agency; in the CIA released a heavily redacted version. His work is extremely useful even if negative, yet is also surprisingly sympathetic.

The book is a good read, but would thus be a much easier one. Seton Hall University Daniel J. By Susan Hardman Moore. New Haven, Conn. As the author of this book notes, some have considered the phenomenon of reverse migration from New England.

Certainly no other study is as comprehensive, and none has engaged so empathetically with the push and pull factors that shaped the experience.

The problems of separat- ism and spiritual authenticity all loom large in her account. For many, the process of identifying with covenanted communities in the New World deepened ambiva- lences at least as often as they offered assurances and a sense of belonging.

Her suggestion that as many as one in four settlers from the s went back is striking. The second part of the book treats that phenomenon. Chapter four argues that the trickle of returners became a flood in the years following the English Civil War. While opportunities abounded throughout the Crom- wellian regime, a return to local roots was common.

Moore makes it clear that the lives of the returnees bear witness to the persistent reality of transatlantic con- nections. Chapter seven explores the compromises and adaptations made by many returnees who sought to gather new congregations, or reintegrate themselves into the muddy Cromwellian religious settlement. Its focus on individual narratives privileges, inevitably, literate and ecclesiastic accounts. Still, such accounts are more representative of this migration than of others.

This study enriches our understanding of the processes of early migration to New England, and the mindset of those who participated in it. By Phillip E. Standard assumptions in Civil War historiography bite the proverbial dust with this new tour de force study. The author pains- takingly dispels this entrenched thesis by placing Anglo-American relations during the Civil War within a longer time frame from the Treaty of Ghent to the Treaty of Washington Phillip E. Anglo-American cooperation in ending the slave trade in , Myers suggests, stemmed from smoothing over the unfortunate edges of the Trent affair.

Both nations were so eager to avoid conflict that they used each other to penetrate lucrative Asian markets during the s, preferring a common Western front to reduce Chinese and Japanese resistance. The Civil War did not metastasize into the First World War because both Lincoln and Palmerston favored pursuing prewar patterns of quiet, informal diplomacy in spite of the constant stream of potentially dangerous and unfortunate situations all over the world that arose from time to time that threatened to pit Britain against the North.

Myers seems adept in both British and American history, and this reviewer recommends this work as a supplementary secondary reading for undergraduate surveys on either the American Civil War or Victorian Britain. This reader only wishes that the author went further into the late nineteenth century to connect his analysis to the beginnings of the Anglo-American alliance that persists today. Britain may have regretted her enabling of American reunion and imperialism, which would even- tually eclipse her own empire.

Norfolk State University Charles H. By Shannon A. The militia spared only those children too young to testify to what they had seen. The U. Army came to the site more than a year later, buried the remains, and erected a monument to the murdered wagon trainers. Anthropologist Shannon A. Novak entered this debate from a rather unique angle.

Despite plans not to disturb the graves, a backhoe disinterred thousands of human bones in the process. Novak was hired to study the bones and quickly determined that she would need more than the allotted thirty days to do a thorough examination.

The result is both illuminating and frustrating. The bones reveal only a limited amount of information about their hosts, and readers must consult other sources to learn about events of the conflict. Focusing on their kinship patterns and social connections, diet, general health, and residential records from northern Arkansas, she reveals that the wagon train consisted of two streams that joined up on the trail and travelled together to their deaths.

Novak determined that the wagon trainers were middle class; ate a good deal of sugar compared to people in other parts of the world , corn, and low- protein pork; and consumed tobacco. They suffered from anemia, but not the syphilis that some Mormons claimed in efforts to minimize the moral reproach that would fall on murderers of clean-living Americans. They worked hard, taxed their bodies, and broke bones in the process.

Though the Arkansans typically took great pains to honor their dead through burial rituals, the militia took so little care of the slain wagon trainers that wolves ate many corpses and the U. Army found remains scattered throughout the meadow when they came to bury the dead eighteen months after the massacre. Novak provides a thorough explication of northern Arkansas life patterns and practices and honors those whom she worries have received too little attention in the debates over the massacre.

By Earl Pomeroy. Published posthumously, with polishing by his colleague Richard W. Several decades ago, Pomeroy urged his colleagues to look forward to the twentieth century for many of the defining features of western history. His final volume explores a century of significant developments and contributions by those who resided in this vibrant and important region. Pomeroy begins his story in with a snapshot of the economic and demographic growth of the West, which he contends had only scratched the surface of the great opportunities and potential the region possessed.

Though family farms dotted the countryside, the author argues that large-scale, mostly corporate operations dominated both sectors. Extractive industries like copper and oil, as well as new businesses like Hollywood, were ruled by a handful of powerful interests.

World War II marked a critical turning point as federal investment in war industries and technological innovations in electronics produced explosive economic growth.

Pomeroy details the rise of airplane firms in Southern California and high-tech operations in Silicon Valley and Puget Sound. Energy booms likewise drove growth in the interior west.

Despite the vast, wide-open spaces, Pomeroy argues that railroads, air- planes, and cars permitted Westerners to live in cities with quick and easy access to rural hinterlands. WWII only accelerated this urbanizing trend with defense industries and high-tech operations drawing new migrants to western cities. Pomeroy also explores how often overlooked factors, in particular powerful newspapers and community support for education, encouraged the seemingly transient western population to sink roots.

Western politics highlights the final part of this study. In the postwar years, western politics increasingly reflected the diversity of its population. Pomeroy con- cludes his study with a thoughtful chapter tracing the twin themes of western history—land and opportunity—from Spanish missions to the glitzy streets of Las Vegas.

In his defense, the geographical definition of the West has vexed many scholars. Students of western history also may not find much new in this study; however, its value lies with its breadth and its insistence that we not lose sight of the important developments and experiences of the twentieth-century American West. By Frank Prochaska. He aptly demonstrates that, despite its commitment to quintessentially American ideals of democracy and egalitarianism, the American public found the glamour and intrigue of hereditary monarchy seductive.

Even in the intransigently antiroyalist climate of the early republic, a consideration of how to style Washington hinted at the deep attachment to monarchy.

The profligacy of his immediate successor brought some renewed suspicion of the monarchy, as many Americans sided with Queen Caroline in the marital discord. However, the acces- sion of Queen Victoria brought heightened interest in the British monarchy. An affection for British royalty seemed to grow with successful visits of members of the royal family. By the late twentieth century, there was something of a return to the equation of royalty with celebrity.

This is most clearly seen in the fascination with the appearance, clothing, and marital woes of Diana, Princess of Wales. Overall, this is a well-written and engaging narrative of American feelings toward the British monarchy. More analysis of why the British monarchy evoked such strong interest on American shores would have been desirable. How far did the fascination with royalty extend beyond the British context? By Alfonso W. Wash- ington, D.

In this elegantly written and passionate volume, the author narrates the story of Peruvian corruption and analyzes its impact on his native land.

For Alfonso W. Quiroz, corruption is more than deplorably fascinating; it is an impediment to development because it siphons off scarce governmental rev- enues, impedes the acquisition of foreign capital, and skews public institutions so they no longer serve the public good.

Although it might initially seem difficult to find sources to establish the nar- rative and provide data to assess the dimensions of Peruvian corruption, Quiroz has assembled massive documentation.

Many Peruvians have written detailed accounts about fraud. Government investigations and the news media have produced copious records. The problem of sources is less that of finding accounts than of carefully assessing their accuracy and degree of exaggeration.

Quiroz begins by showing how corruption spread during the colonial period. Despite attempts by the absolutist Bourbon mon- archy to curb corruption in the late eighteenth century, reform failed, and inde- pendence ushered in an era when weak civilian governments lacked the institutions and popular support to prevent politicians and military leaders from pillaging national finances.

Quiroz also estimates the percentage of public revenues and gross domestic product stolen through such corruption. These are rough estimates but reflect an astounding diversion of national resources: Peru has often lost 30—40 percent of government funds and 3—5 percent of GDP to corruption.

In the s, President Alberto Fujimori and his henchman Vladimiro Montesinos each absconded with hundreds of millions of dollars. For Quiroz, a Peruvian, Corrupt Circles is more than a dry academic exercise. Perhaps the book will awaken non-Peruvians to the corruption that distorts public institutions in their own countries and diverts revenues from public to private interests. Brigham Young University Kendall W. By David A. Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska Press, Imagine, for a moment, that there was no water or direct land access to Alaska.

Any consistent contact with Alaska would have to come via the air. Imagine this in an era without jet aircraft. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the possibility of the Imperial Japanese Navy cutting off sea access to Alaska Territory could not be discounted.

To ensure regular contact with Alaska Territory, the government decided to attempt con- struction of a land-route between this territory and the lower forty-eight states. Negotiations between the U. What sets this book apart is David A. This study transcends conventional narrative by weaving colorful and insight- ful oral history interviews from those who built, maintained, and used the highway, and especially from those who have lived with it.

To hear the cat skinners bulldozer operators , truckers, and locals tell their stories in their own words gives this work a sense of immediacy that a standard monograph lacks. Remley discusses the advantages and challenges of such an approach in the preface to this edition. Often forgotten among the political and physical issues surrounding the road are the social issues.

The Alcan Highway, for better or worse, has altered the lives of those who live in the region. Remley spends a considerable amount of time describing this transition from a time when the most reliable form of winter transport was a dog sled to an era populated with filling stations and roadside restaurants. Remley identifies the key secondary works about this highway and provides brief essays on sources for each of his chapters.

A perusal of these will demon- strate the author is well grounded in the primary sources and secondary literature. The only concerns this reviewer had were some minor errors in the text Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, not the third and the absence of maps. So many placenames and mileposts are referenced in the text that it would be helpful to provide a series of maps showing just where, exactly, all of these locations are. By William H. Thomas Jr. Madison, Wisc.

It has long been known that during World War I the Department of Justice engaged in massive persecution of dissenters. By focusing on legal action, however, historians have inadvertently neglected extensive informal browbeating. Authorities even monitored several African Americans, fearing that an aggressive Germany might unsettle traditions of white supremacy.

Founded by Theodore Roosevelt in , the Bureau originally concentrated on peonage, prostitution, banking abuses, and illegal business combinations. It drew upon private vigilantes organized in the American Protective League, whose members often conducted their own investigations and escorted department employees on their interviews.

Attorney General Thomas W. Ultimate responsibility, however, lay with President Wilson, who was obsessed with German espionage before America entered the conflict and who did little to support civil liberties afterwards. Certain matters are particularly poignant.

The Reverend Wilhelm Schumann, pastor of an Evangelical Synod in Pomeroy, Iowa, found his parish burned and himself imprisoned for supposedly lacking enthusiasm for the conflict. Gregory felt so intensely concerning matters of loyalty that he refused to condemn the lynching of Frank Little, an organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World. Because of its large German American population, Wisconsin met with par- ticular federal scrutiny.

It was also the state where the patriotic crusade most often became occasion for settling unrelated scores. Joseph M. Koudelka, a Bohemian and bishop of Superior, Wisconsin, became suspect for claiming that a German defeat would injure Catholicism in the United States.

Koudelka, it was later discovered, had been victimized by internal ethnic rivalries within the church, for his chief accusers were of Irish and Polish descent. The newspaper Wisconsin State Journal sought to eliminate a new rival, the Madison Capital Times, by accusing it of pro-Teutonic sentiments. Particularly intriguing is William H. Though at first glance, reform and repression seem antithetical, many progressives saw a centralized federal bureaucracy as the means by which civic problems could be solved.

They therefore found it relatively easy to use a powerful state apparatus to impose national consensus in times of crisis. Yet Thomas offers no simplistic pattern, as he shows that such prominent progressives as Senator Robert M. La Follette and publisher Oswald Garrison Villard strongly defended constitutional liberties. His bibliography of books, articles, and dissertations is unusually complete. Readers are grateful for a fine, if disturbing, study. New College of Florida Justus D.

By Thomas M. The equally dire needs of the British Empire during this grueling war also spurred stronger efforts than usual to end the illicit traffic, including embargoes of provisions exports, bonds on colonial shipping, and a Flour Act in that prohibited North American but not English exports of provisions to non-British ports. The blatant one-sidedness of such anticolonial legislation fueled resentment of imperial authority that challenged loyalty to the very idea of empire and that festered until the imperial crisis.

Along the way, Thomas M. Truxes gives readers lively accounts of social life in a war-torn city, as well as the anxieties and prospects for economic risk that faced sailors, impressed soldiers, French spies, informers, and waterfront workers. His narrative is peppered with intriguing stories of ships touching at far-flung ports where captains negotiated for ill-gotten gains with lies, bribes, and false papers while governors and imperial authorities wrung their hands helplessly.

This is not the first scholarly work on smuggling in the mid-Atlantic, but Truxes has made a few choices that separate his study from others. New Yorkers had been developing deep and enduring networks of collaboration with non-British West Indies islands for generations.

Further, Truxes focuses primarily on the smugglers actively seeking French Caribbean sugar either via neighboring islands or directly with French-held ports; but he barely introduces the reader to the intricate networks of smuggling that also existed between New Yorkers and Spanish or Dutch merchants throughout the Atlantic world, northern European cities, and sister colonies in North America.

Finally, Truxes relies heavily on only a few individuals to carry his story, especially those who were appointed to enforce laws and merchants who had particular connections to Ireland. By Alexander Tsesis. Drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary sources, the author traces the history of civil rights and the law from the founding of the Republic to recent times.

In making this argument, Tsesis does not downplay the failures of the United States to live up to ideals. This said, even this chapter shares a flaw with much of the rest of the book. Tsesis is at his best when he describes what happened, but he less successfully conveys why things happened, or more precisely why things happened when they did in the way they did.

Put somewhat differently, his understanding of the historical process is less fully developed than his comprehension of the law. For example, he fails to incorporate the insights of scholars who have noted the ways that vast demographic shifts, particularly the Great Migration, and the Cold War, respectively, underlay the emergence of the modern civil rights movement.

This paradox helps explain many of the contradictions at the core of U. York College Peter B. By Jennifer L. In scholar Frank L. Jennifer L. Weber rightly argues that Copperheads posed a real, immediate, and dangerous threat to the stability of the Lincoln administration and its ability to conduct the Civil War successfully.

Indeed, by August , Cop- perheads had successfully installed George B. McClellan as the Democratic presi- dential candidate and stood poised to capture the White House.

Copperheads ignored Confederate demands for independence, advocating instead a return to the antebellum status quo. As bodies piled up and victories remained elusive, an increasingly disillusioned and distressed public joined the Copperheads in agitating for peace without victory. Fed by rumors of further secessions, conspiracies plotted in Canada and domestically, and ultimately Confederate victory, public dissension about the war was open, vocal, hysterical, and some- times violent. The decaying Northern home front forced Lincoln to acknowledge openly the Copperhead threat and to confront it.

By August , supporters abandoned Lincoln in droves, and Republicans openly discussed replacing Lincoln on the ballot. McClellan and the Copperheads appeared destined for the presidency and the war for conclusion. McClellan suffered a crushing election defeat, Lincoln secured a second term due in large measure to the overwhelming support of his previously disillusioned soldiers, antiwar agitators fell silent, and the Copperhead threat permanently dissipated. In terms of military ramifications, the work might benefit from a fuller and more compelling investi- gation of the seemingly inverse relationship between the increasing antiwar aspects of the Copperheads and voting patterns among the military.

University of Wyoming Cheryl A. By Peter W. The religious landscape of the United States has changed dramatically over the last decade. The election of a born-again president in George W. As in previous edi- tions, Williams provides an exhaustive, indispensable, almost encyclopedic survey of the history of religions in North America from the age of exploration to the present.

Those who teach specialized courses related to the history of religion in the U. In the introduction, the author includes key analytical terms used throughout the book on matters such as denominationalism, revival- ism, immigration, nationalism, and pluralism.

Moreover, the nearly one-hundred- page bibliography is unparalleled in its comprehensiveness and especially helpful in its topical organization. But most of all, this work is unmatched in its usefulness for students and educators, lay readers, and professional historians to think more clearly about the complexities of religious life in America.

By Rosemarie Zagarri. Philadelphia, Pa. Although describing the early nineteenth century, this work is oddly apropos to the polarized political climate of the early twenty-first century.

The author depicts a virulent political climate following the hotly contested presidential election of , in which the incumbent John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson. She recounts tales of a young Republic struggling with nascent political parties that became sharp dividing lines in society, so sharp that women and men of different parties often would not marry one another !

Often citing recent research, she explores the political ideas and notions of women between and Zagarri argues that women remained active and politicized from the time of the Revolution through the War of Shortly thereafter, politics disintegrated into a name-calling affair and the role of women became one of conciliation and peacemaking.

By the economic downturn of , women had become peculiarly silent and remained so in the decades preceding Seneca Falls. Zagarri offers theories on why this change took place including the movement of electioneering from public to private spaces and the notion that women, in their new role as social reformers, discovered a more successful outlet for their energies. The work is organized chronologically, beginning as early as the fifteenth century.

The central argument depends on material from letters, newspapers, and books as each paragraph introduces yet another lengthy quote. Though some new material is presented, including the publications that featured histories of women, many of the quotes are oft-cited ones, sometimes repeated even in the book itself. She argues that the new science allowed the denial of equal rights to both women and African Americans on the basis of their unique biologies.

To the better-versed student, however, much of the information is often a restatement of earlier works. Nevertheless, the topic is thoroughly explored in this work, which does postulate some new questions and answers that are worth exploring. By Charles L. Lawrence, Kans. The presidential election deadlock in between Al Gore and George W. Bush remains puzzling. In this thoughtful, thought- provoking, detailed yet occasionally dense book, Charles L. Zelden revisits this historical moment most Americans wish they could forget, noting that those who should have learned valuable lessons from it seem to have forgotten them.

An author who has published on democracy and voting, he organizes the book chronologically. Both the Democrats and the Republicans used the law to deliver the election for their candidate, not to uphold any ideal. George W. Bush resisted a recount because the limited time guaranteed it would be selective, and he had won a slim majority of legal ballots cast in Florida.

This balanced, nuanced approach pays off in sifting through the controversial Supreme Court opinion that ended the Florida recounts, thus securing the presi- dency for Bush. Offering a deliberate, justice-by-justice analysis, Zelden dismisses the Democratic complaint that the Supreme Court decision was a partisan power- play by judicial hacks. Gore, stopping the recounts and raising the specter of judicial overreach in the picking of the president, out of a mix of personal ego, political preference, and ultimately a sense of duty—all aimed at ending what they perceived to be a crisis so great that they felt almost forced to act.

Alas, the system remains deeply flawed. While teaching important lessons from the previous debacle, it challenges Americans to avoid repeating similar mistakes—for the sake of our democracy. Berkeley, Calif. The editors have retained the question-answer format and overall organization of the original.