Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? By Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 376p. $35.00.

The contribution of political science to an analysis of the effectiveness of recent reform efforts in American education has not been without its share of controversy. Balanced against the conclusions of a group of careful, theoretically grounded, and objective studies of school reforms have been questions about the role of ideology, lack of evidentiary support, and overly optimistic pronouncements raised against other studies in the field. It is against the backdrop of this sometimes tendentious literature that Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider examine the possibilities of one of America's larger and more controversial school reform initiatives in their recent book, Charter Schools.

The Welfare State Nobody Knows: Debunking Myths about U.S. Social Policy. By Christopher Howard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 260p. $29.95.

Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization. By Sanford E. Schram. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. 208p. $64.50 cloth, $21.95 paper.

These two books on the American welfare state seek to challenge conventional understandings of redistributive policy and politics in the United States. Christopher Howard does so by looking at the many tools of social policy that, he argues, have been downplayed or ignored in most academic research. In addition to the well-known social insurance and transfer programs such as Social Security and public assistance, he argues, tax expenditures subsidizing private welfare provision (e.g., child tax credit), regulatory policies, minimum wage laws, tort laws, housing loan guarantees, and entities such as the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation should all be included within the definition of the welfare state. Doing so reveals that the American welfare state is not a “chronic underachiever” but, in fact, “large and far-reaching” (p. 1). Howard cautions, however, that this heterogeneous mix of social policy tools does not make the American welfare state particularly effective. On the contrary, given enduringly high rates of poverty and widening income inequality in this country, the welfare state is paradoxically both extensive and limited in its ability to address some of the greatest social problems in the United States.

Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines. By Andrew Koppelman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 224p. $35.00.

America's Struggle For Same-Sex Marriage. By Daniel R. Pinello. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 213p. $55.00 cloth, $19.99 paper.

The landscape of marriage in the United States is changing yet again, driven this time by tensions over the rights of same-sex couples to marry. States across the nation have revisited their laws in recent years to clarify the legal rights and responsibilities of same-sex couples, with widely divergent outcomes. Massachusetts permits same-sex couples to marry, currently the only state to do so. Six other states grant same-sex couples all the state-level rights and benefits of marriage, typically under the name of civil unions. On the flip side, 26 states have amended their constitutions expressly to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples; 17 also bar the establishment or recognition of alternative legal regimes designed to give the substantive rights of marriage to same-sex couples. One additional state, Hawaii, amended its constitution to give the state's legislature the sole ability to decide who may marry, a move that successfully derailed a constitutional challenge to the state's existing marriage regime. The federal government has also gotten into the game. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) limits marriage to opposite-sex couples for all federal purposes and authorizes states to opt out of recognizing same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions.

Presidential Secrecy and the Law. By Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 261p. $50.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

Empirical work about governmental secrecy faces an obvious hurdle: The more extensive, thus worthy of analysis, that secrecy is, the less there is to analyze. Yet given recent events and their stakes—the potential that secrecy has for “destroying or undermining the legal, political, and cultural traditions that undergird our political system” (p. 5)—the kindling of scholarly light to shine into this void is vital. In this comprehensive if sometimes polemic narrative detailing modern presidents' institutionalization of secrecy in the executive branch, Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver take a welcome step in this direction.

Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. By Mary Pattillo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 400p. $29.00.

In her book, Mary Pattillo sets out to lay to rest any notion that there is a unitary political agenda binding all blacks to a common political cause. She accomplishes this goal by thoroughly dismantling the well-worn but persistent myth of a “black community” that speaks in one voice. She is not the first to discredit that hoary notion, but her book is likely to become the most effective and influential work to do so. The main reason for this may be that she brings a subtlety to her argument that goes far beyond mere critique. Her analysis is both more nuanced and ultimately more positive than any previous statement in the literature.