The Public Family: Exploring Its Role in Democratic Society. By David J. Herring. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. 272p. $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

In the name of the family, the state has tried to encourage marriage for poor, single mothers yet denied marriage to homosexual couples. By terminating parental rights, the state denies certain adults the opportunity to raise their children, but the state has imposed parental obligations on others through measures such as child support enforcement. The state acknowledges the responsibility to educate all children but refuses to provide to all minors other important social goods, such as public assistance. Our policies toward families indicate any number of conundrums. In order to think more clearly about family law and policy, David Herring argues that we need to develop a deeper understanding of the public functions of the family, one with a healthy regard for the ways in which the family challenges and undermines the state.

The Illusions of Egalitarianism. By John Kekes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. 228p. $29.95.

According to John Kekes, contemporary Anglo-American political theory is dominated by egalitarian writers to the extent that all other voices are either drowned out or systematically excluded. Egalitarians “write books about each other's books, and mostly articles about each other's articles” (p. 188), and when confronted by those who disagree, they merely resort to “abuse” (p. 66). This egalitarian hegemony is both surprising and, where it does not render political theory irrelevant, politically dangerous because it is built on illusions rather than rational, defensible, arguments. The point of this book is to reveal those illusions and the absurdities that follow from them.

The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom. By Chandran Kukathas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 304p. $45.00.

For over a decade, Chandran Kukathas has been a distinctive voice in the debate in political theory over what liberalism mandates with respect to multiculturalism and the political accommodation of cultural diversity. Many contemporary liberals defend cultural rights for cultural minorities while insisting that their practices conform to fundamental liberal values or demands of citizenship. Kukathas denies any warrant for cultural rights but grants great authority to cultural communities to live as they please. His arguments in support of this conclusion have developed over the years. This book represents the culmination of his inquiries, where the relation of his earlier arguments—especially regarding freedom of association, toleration, and freedom of conscience—is explained and set out within a general “theory of diversity and freedom.” It is a fitting culminating work for this most independent of thinkers—beautifully written; skeptical, systematic, even tenacious in argumentation; rich in examples and insights; and liberally spiced with wit. The thesis, however, remains as provocative as ever.

Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism. By Anthony W. Marx. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 288p. $26.00.

This is a bold and challenging study of European nationalism based on the following thesis: Nationalism was a phenomenon of state building that predated the eighteenth-century starting point favored by most scholars and whose genesis was elite pragmatism and popular mobilization. Moving the origins of nationalism back to the sixteenth (and even late fifteenth) century allows Anthony Marx to make two arguments, one explanatory and the other evaluative. Of the two, the former seems to be more persuasive.

Political Virtue and Shopping: Individuals, Consumerism and Collective Action. By Michele Micheletti. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 247p. $55.00.

Although this book is complex and multifaceted, there is one central argument running through it. This argument consists of the claim that consumption practices can be understood as political practices, and that such consumption practices are significant for societal development. For example, when a woman goes to the supermarket to buy shampoo, she can choose to buy the one with an environmentally friendly label, thus supporting policies of sustainability. The author sees the phenomenon of political consumerism as a reaction to the derooting of politics from the context of the nation-state into more microlocal as well as more global contexts, and she develops her own concept for defining political consumerism as political participation, namely, individualized collective action.

From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism. By Charles W. Mills. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003. 312p. $75.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

The author of the influential The Racial Contract (1997) has gathered together a provocative collection of his essays. These disparate papers do not form an argument for an overarching thesis. Nor do they converge on a single theme, for example, the need to shift away from a focus on class toward race, as the title might suggest. Rather, the essays reveal the recent changes in Charles Mills's philosophical interests, away from core problems in orthodox Marxism toward the project of developing a critical race theory. One constant throughout is Mills's attempt to demonstrate that the methods of analytic philosophy are not inherently “bourgeois,” as many radicals have supposed, but can be usefully applied to problems that concern leftists. Yet unlike much of analytic philosophy, these essays are never boring but instead are generously laced with the author's characteristic biting sarcasm and bold humor.

Marx, Tocqueville and Race in America: The “Absolute Democracy” or “Defiled Republic.” By August H. Nimtz, Jr. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. 314p. $90.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Something Alexis de Tocqueville said about the irritable patriotism of the Americans might be just as easily applied to his own political theory. One would gladly agree to praise much in Tocqueville's writings if one were occasionally permitted to be critical of him. This book serves as a much-needed reminder that he was not omniscient, that he did not get everything right in his visit to America, and that he was never unequivocally on the side of radical participatory democracy. Bringing Marx's critical thoughts on race to bear on Tocqueville's vision of America as the “absolute democracy,” this book focuses on the fascinating question of why Tocqueville and Marx saw America in such radically different ways—as the vanguard of democratic equality, on the one hand, or as the epitome of racial inequality, on the other. How can these two mutually exclusive critical visions be reconciled? This book's animating premise is every bit as promising as its execution is disappointing, at least with respect to Tocqueville.

Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship. By Lorraine Smith Pangle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 255p. $65.00.

Aristotle is not generally regarded as the friendliest of writers. No doubt the starkness and seriousness of his elliptical prose is felt to be less than companionable. Nonetheless, he does devote one-fifth of the Nicomachean Ethics to an analysis of friendship. Moreover, the two books on friendship (VIII and IX) hold the penultimate position, coming right before Book X's concluding assertion of the superiority of the philosophic life. Lorraine Smith Pangle seeks the reason for and the meaning of friendship's privileged position within Aristotle's ethical explorations.

Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham. By Thomas L. Pangle. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 285p. $39.95.

Thomas Pangle's book begins with a flourish: Taking issue with modern rationalists (e.g., Hobbes, Locke) and their claims that Scripture is wholly amenable to and comprehensible by the tools of rational analysis, Pangle argues that “this contention of theirs is in fact a key dimension of a titanic strategy of propaganda, whereby Holy Writ is to be reconceived and in a sense rewritten so as to be subsumed in a vast secular cultural revolution” (p. 6). As opposed to Socratic philosophy, which always recognized and insisted on the knowledge of its own ignorance, such modern rationalists ultimately want “to reduce religious reflection and argument … to the status of a birdlike cacophony of merely private and personal, shallow and shifting, opinions” (p. 11). Furthermore, Pangle insists, any reader of the Platonic corpus will recall that Socrates was prosecuted for impiety, and relied heavily on his daimonin in justifying his public conduct in the Athenian square, thus throwing into doubt all such attempts to subsume the revealed under the rational.

Ruling Passions: Political Offices and Democratic Ethics. By Andrew Sabl. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 304p. $75.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

This book is filled with useful insights, but the parts do not fit together. The reader is treated to many interesting commentaries on authors ranging from Cicero to Charles Fried, from James Madison to Anthony Downs. Yet it is often difficult to discern why Andrew Sabl makes assertions that are supposed to be part of, or derived from, the “theory” he proposes in the process of offering these commentaries—his proposed “theory of democratic constancy.” On the basis of this theory he offers surprisingly specific prescriptions for how political actors, such as U.S. senators, activists, and political organizers, should act. Yet the connection between the theory and these prescriptions is far from clear. And he goes on to dismiss alternative theories, such as “populism” and “deliberative democracy,” that can be interpreted as offering prescriptions for some of the same political roles he is interested in, yet it is difficult to see the basis for the asserted superiority of “democratic constancy” over these alternatives.

Sovereign Nations, Carnal States. By Kam Shapiro. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. 208p. $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Kam Shapiro's book is part of a larger literature of radical political theory whose inspiration can be traced to Friedrich Nietzsche and Baruch Spinoza as read by Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, and richly translated into the terms of political theory by William E. Connolly, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and Brian Massumi, among others. Hardt and Negri's Empire (2001), Massumi's Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002), and Connolly's Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (2002) are among recent works that provide a context for the studies that Shapiro presents here, for each of them develops concepts for what is taken to be a newly emerging and unprecedented arrangement of society. With the new arrangement of things, “political somatics”—to use a phrase that Shapiro borrows from Terry Eagleton—becomes central to decision making and the exercise of power, even as these might appear to have been overwhelmed by the less tangible, more “virtual” phenomena of global communications. The study of embodiment, of what politics does to the body and how the body defines the political, takes on central importance.

Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics. By Steven B. Smith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. 256p. $35.00.

Steven Smith's book is not only an approachable and engaging interpretation of one of the most difficult philosophical works—Spinoza's Ethics—but an exemplary manifestation of philosophical exegesis. It gracefully positions Spinoza within the ongoing discussion that still constitutes the modernity that forms and informs us. Smith wants to position him within the tradition of modern political philosophy as one of the first to think through the prerequisites for modern, secular, democratic life and what is required morally and psychologically of a modern democratic individual. I would suggest, however, that in the end it is possible that the author comes just as close to positioning Spinoza as a proto-postmodern in the mode of Nietzsche or Heidegger.

Modern Social Imaginaries. By Charles Taylor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. 232p. $64.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Few contemporary thinkers can match the diversity, quantity, and quality of work produced by Charles Taylor. At the center of this corpus has been his work on Western modernity, the most important effort of which being his 1989 opus, Sources of the Self. Fifteen years later, Taylor has now published the first installment of a new, related, but distinct study of Western modernity.

Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics: Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People. By Scott L. Althaus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 384p. $75.00 cloth, $28.00 paper.

The central theme of this book deals with the relationship between knowledge, representation, and political equality as expressed in opinion surveys. Scott Althaus finds that political knowledge does matter. In addition, the way that knowledge is distributed in society has an important impact on how one should interpret the collective preferences of the public, particularly when assessing the role of the less knowledgeable.

Point, Click, & Vote: The Future of Internet Voting. By R. Michael Alvarez and Thad E. Hall. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004. 204p. $46.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

The Politics of Internet Communication. By Robert J. Klotz. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004. 280p. $60.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Arguments against remote Internet voting typically point to concerns over access and security. Despite the growth of the medium over the past decade, sizable portions of the U.S. population still lack home access. Moreover, the patterns of Internet access generally reflect the patterns of voter participation in the country; higher income, higher educated, and white citizens connect to the medium and vote at the highest rates. Therefore, the introduction of remote Internet voting likely would reinforce current participatory inequities. The other major concern, security, challenges the fitness of Internet voting even if the United States achieves universal access. Denial-of-service attacks and viruses may disrupt the transmission of ballots, and hackers may change votes already cast by getting past the system's fail-safe mechanisms. In short, most policy reviews agree that the time for remote Internet voting has not yet arrived; federal and state governments should focus their near- and medium-term developmental initiatives on electronic voting or secure kiosk Internet voting, rather than on remote Internet voting.

You, the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric. By Vanessa B. Beasley. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. 256p. $39.95.

As leaders of a diverse democracy, how do U.S. presidents define American national identity in their rhetoric? Using an interpretive approach, Vanessa Beasley attempts to answer this question by examining inaugural and State of the Union addresses from 1885 to 2000. She concludes that presidents have adopted an ideational standard for American identity in their public discourse that is both inclusive and exclusive at the same time.

A Voice for Nonprofits. By Jeffrey M. Berry with David F. Arons. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 210p. $26.95.

The field of political science has long grappled with the standing of interest groups in the policymaking process. Debate persists about the leverage of lobbyists, public interest groups, political action committees, and other special interests, and whether such influence is effective or not, appropriate or not, representative or not. This literature largely ignores “mainstream” nonprofit organizations (those covered by section 501c3 of the federal tax code), however, though these organizations serve a substantial—and substantially disenfranchised—sector of society. With this book, Jeffrey Berry shines light on these organizations, illuminating their role not only as service providers but as advocates, and even activists. Berry's book is a welcome addition to a growing literature about nonprofit organizations that will be valuable to the managers working to run them and to academics interested in studying them.

Campaigning Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections. By Bruce Bimber and Richard Davis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 240p. $49.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.

With the advent of graphic browsers for the World Wide Web, users have surged onto the Internet. Jupitermedia's network user address estimates show that the number of U.S. residents online jumped from fewer than 18 million in 1994 to more than 164 million in December 2000 (www.nua.com/surveys/how_many_online/n_america.html). Such rapid change makes the assessment of the Internet's impact on American elections a precarious undertaking.

Television: The Limits of Deregulation. By Lori A. Brainard. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003. 198p. $49.95.

In many respects, Lori Brainard's case study of the “incremental, incomplete, and highly ambiguous” deregulation of television from the midseventies through the midnineties suffers from false advertising. Rather than a mere case study in a field highly populated by such analyses, it is an ambitious attempt to critically assess competing midlevel theories of regulatory change and macrolevel determinants of policy change. As Alexander George has observed, case studies are extremely valuable, not because they test theories but because they clarify, offer critical insight into, and generate hypotheses for future research on those theories. Viewed from this perspective, Brainard's book provides a strong basis for deeper examinations of change in the regulatory and the broader policy process.

Amici Curiae and Strategic Behavior in State Supreme Courts. By Scott A. Comparato. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 192p. $64.95.

There is a plethora of studies examining whether or not judges engage in strategic behavior, yet many important questions remain about the motivations that encourage judges to behave strategically and how institutional rules shape these motivations. In his book, Scott A. Comparato asks whether institutional rules encourage strategic behavior by state supreme courts, litigants, and amici participants. His work is motivated by the idea that information provided by interest groups in amicus briefs is an important reference point for state supreme court justices.