A Kinder, Gentler America: Melancholia and the Mythical 1950s. By Mary Caputi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 232p. $58.50 cloth, $19.50 paper.

Given the controversies that have plagued the present administration, it is little wonder that critiques of neoconservatives have been produced by scholars from all perspectives. Even Francis Fukuyama, widely reputed to be one of the great neoconservative thinkers, has released a trenchant critique of neoconservatives' ideas and policies (America at the Crossroads, 2006). In her contribution to this growing chorus, Mary Caputi argues that neoconservatives have used and abused history in creating a mythical image of America's past, an idealized narrative about American life in “the fifties” that she contrasts with the complex historical strata of the chronological 1950s. She argues that the neoconservatives have cultivated, popularized, and exploited a misleading and incomplete image of a “kinder, gentler America” to generate a peculiarly powerful melancholia that haunts us with the memory of what we (supposedly) were and what we might (erroneously wish to) be again. Only by seeing through this idealized vision of that decade can we “understand that America's true identity is not located in some mythological register of time” and thus “let go of the worries and sadness that drive the need for foundations” and moral certainties (p. 27).

Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought. By A. James Gregor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 288p. $35.00.

A. James Gregor is the leading authority on Italian fascist ideology in the English language. Mussolini's Intellectuals is the conclusion of 40 years of scholarship on fascist intellectuals and the ideology they produced. While specialists will find little if anything new in this volume, the uninitiated will find a cogent presentation of the author's long-standing claim: that Italian fascism was not simply the violent, irrational, anti-intellectual phenomenon so often misrepresented in the historical and social scientific literature but, rather, a movement with a serious ideological core that responded to the historical failings of the liberal state, as well as to the conjunctural problems of the interwar period. The book's major strength derives from a firm grasp of the intellectual origins of fascism, particularly the unredeemed promise of the Risorgimento to develop a morally regenerated and unified nation.

Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle. By Cass R. Sunstein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 246p. $65.00 cloth, $23.99 paper.

This is the era in which many prefer to be safe than to be sorry. In the past five years, we have seen the United States justify a preemptive war against Iraq lest Saddam Hussein use weapons of mass destruction against us or others. Ordinary Asian citizens donned surgical masks to avoid contracting severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. And in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Americans stocked up on duct tape so that they could be “sheltered-in-place.” Is not an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure?

“Women's Work” as Political Art: Weaving and Dialectical Politics in Homer, Aristophanes, and Plato. By Lisa Pace Vetter. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. 190p. $60.00.

Metaphors are a staple of the practice of political theory. Socrates' “individual writ large,” Machiavelli's “Fortuna is a woman,” Hobbes's “leviathan”: These and scores of others speak to the power of metaphorical language in the theorist's arsenal. Lisa Pace Vetter's “women's work” focuses on the metaphor of weaving, a craft associated with the female working at her loom by the hearth. Vetter explores this metaphor in four texts: the Odyssey, Lysistrata, Statesman, and Phaedo. She finds in the metaphor a “dialectical foundationalism” that mediates between subjectivity and objectivity, reason and emotion, action and deliberation (p. 7). Weaving incorporates complexity, creating a new whole without destroying the particularities that comprise it. This form of weaving she values, but it appears only in the Socrates speech in the Phaedo and the construction of Plato's dialogue.

The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. By David Vogel. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 2005. 222p. $28.95.

Is there a “market for virtue”? If so, what can it do, and what can it not do to improve our world? In his incisive new book, David Vogel takes aim at these questions and the now-fashionable claim that there is a business case for corporate social responsibility (CSR). He concludes that there is no business case that can be generalized to all firms per se, but there is a political case for broadening what we mean by that much-used term.

Trust and Rule. By Charles Tilly. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 214p. $55.00 cloth, $19.99 paper.

From his earliest publications, Charles Tilly has focused on the relationships between varying sets of agents in civil society, forms of rule, and state formation. Democracy, and the circumstances under which it arises or disintegrates, has been an important aspect of these inquiries. Tilly's fullest, recent examination of these issues is his (2003) Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000. There, he argued that what was crucial for democratization over the long period was the insulation of public politics from “categorical inequalities” of class, race, gender and the like; the transformation of public politics in ways that broadened and equalized participation, enhanced collective control of government, and inhibited arbitrary conduct by political actors; and the integration of “trust networks” into public politics. Trust and Rule elaborates the conceptual and historical arguments for this last “necessary” condition for democratization. In doing so the author jousts briefly (but persuasively) with the recent debate over “trust,” social capital, and democracy. He then recasts that debate in the light of older literatures in social history, sociology, and institutional economics on networks as a means of collective action in the presence of various forms of rule, not only democracy.

Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar. By Ellen Kennedy. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 272p. $79.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Carl Schmitt's 1933 involvement with national socialism constitutes a frequent interpretative entry point into his work. From there, his pre-Weimar as well as his post–World War II writings become logically implicated with his infamous role as the Third Reich's “Crown Jurist.” It is the merit of Ellen Kennedy to break away from this dominant, often redundant, trend to offer an original reading of Schmitt's constitutional and political theory. Instead of debating whether his endorsement of Nazism was a matter of principle, Kennedy boldly shifts direction to address broader, more interesting theoretical issues prompted by his writings. Her main goal is to address the relevance of Schmitt's Weimar-era work for contemporary political and constitutional problems.

Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy. By Romand Coles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 376p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

In 1859, two years after England crushed the Indian Uprising, John Stuart Mill explained why the rules of international morality do not apply to “barbarians”: “In the first place, the rules of international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their will sufficiently under the influence of distant motives” (“A Few Words on Intervention,” in Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1962).

The Idea of Democracy in the Modern Era. By Ralph Ketcham. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. 312p. $35.00.

Democracy today suffers from hermeneutic exhaustion in contemporary political contexts. It is regularly proclaimed as both a principle of war and a principle of peace, as a necessary component of free market capitalism and the name of resistance to economic globalization, as that which legitimates the power of the nation-state and that which perpetually threatens to undermine that power. As such, democracy risks becoming one of those worn-out coins that Friedrich Nietzsche invokes, “drained of sensuous force” (Philosophy and Truth, 1979, 84).

Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy. Edited by Andrew Valls. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 294p. $45.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

This is an important work, which I highly recommend. Andrew Valls has gathered an impressive collection of essays, primarily from philosophers, each of which examines the place of race in the work of a writer of the modern Western canon. The writers under examination here are Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, John Stuart Mill, Marx, and Nietzsche. They are all strong, thoughtful essays, and the text as a whole will prove valuable for upper-level undergraduate and graduate philosophy and political theory classes.

Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth. By Robert B. Westbrook. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 272p. $29.95.

In this ambitious collection, Robert Westbrook aims to recover, from philosophical pragmatism, insight—and hope—regarding the promise of democracy. Following on his John Dewey and American Philosophy (1991), Dewey is surely his main man. Part One, “Pragmatism Old,” offers critical discussions of Dewey, Charles Peirce and William James. Part Two, “Pragmatism New,” treats recent writers who have identified themselves with pragmatism, including Hilary Putnam, Cheryl Misak, Cornel West, and Richard Posner. Richard Rorty is surely the main character in these accounts.

Pluralism. By William E. Connolly. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 208p. $69.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Pluralism and Liberal Democracy. By Richard E. Flathman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 232p. $40.00.

During the past century, thinkers have explored “pluralism” under at least five different rubrics. Political pluralism emerged in Britain, and then migrated to America, as a reaction to doctrines of plenipotentiary state power. William James counterposed metaphysical pluralism to philosophies that claimed the ability to comprehend all truth in single, unified doctrines. Isaiah Berlin drew a distinction between monism and value pluralism—the thesis that worthy goods and principles are heterogeneous and cannot be combined into a single best way of living, for individuals or communities. James Madison enjoyed a midcentury revival in the theory of interest group pluralism. Most recently, John Rawls has cited the fact of pluralism—the diversity characteristic of modern societies under circumstances of liberty—as a challenge that legitimate liberal societies must address.

Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights. By Carol C. Gould. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 288p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

In her book, Carol Gould extends the argument she developed in Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy and Society (1988) by addressing both the problems and potential benefits of increasing global interconnectedness. In particular, she is concerned to explore and, so far as possible, resolve the tensions between human rights and democracy, seeking in the process to reconcile a robust conception of human rights with the recognition of social and cultural diversity.

Knowledge and Social Construction. By Andrew M. Koch. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. 174p. $65.00.

Epistemology—even more than mathematics—is arguably the paradigmatic science of modernity. Critics of modernity, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, and Martin Heidegger, have all in one way or another argued against the modern worry over knowing and have recommended instead “doing.” In light of this, Andrew M. Koch's Knowledge and Social Construction is intriguing. Its inspiration draws from many of modernity's prominent critics. Yet, curiously, as the book's title makes clear, its argument is an epistemological one.

In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument. Collected essays by Bernard Williams, edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. 196p. $29.95.

As the editor reminds us, until the early eighties Bernard Williams's very strong reputation was primarily as a moral philosopher (albeit he also contributed valuable work in epistemology). It was clear, however, that his views had important implications for politics and political theory (no more so than in the superb essay “The Idea of Equality,” the one earlier essay reprinted in this collection). And beginning in the eighties, perhaps influenced by his friendship with Isaiah Berlin and the influence of the latter upon his thinking, Williams focused his thinking increasingly both on quite practical politics and on major issues in political theory. His interest in moral questions never waned, but his reflections concerning them almost always made connections to political and/or political theoretical issues.

Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought. By Jerry Weinberger. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. 352p. $34.95.

There are two important issues raised by Jerry Weinberger's intricate, probing, and insightful book: whether his portrayal of Franklin is accurate and whether Franklin's understanding of existence is correct. Weinberger's thesis is controversial: From age 15, when Franklin read his father's books on theology until his death at 84, he never wavered in his conviction that God did not exist, religion was superstition, and moral principles were merely longings of the human psyche, unfulfilled in this life or the next. But if he took such a skeptical view of righteousness, why did he pen his Autobiography and promote such homespun virtues as temperance, frugality, justice, chastity, and humility?

Origin Stories in Political Thought: Discourses on Gender, Power, and Citizenship. By Joanne H. Wright. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 260p. $50.00.

The author's express purpose in this book is “to cast a critical eye on the origins motif as it surfaces in the tradition of political thought” (p. 23). “Political origin stories,” Joanne Wright tells us, “are narratives about the beginnings of politics and power” (p. 3). Origin narratives may be used to consolidate existing or threatened political arrangements, or to inspire radical efforts to reconfigure the prevailing terms of political identity and civic consociation. The crucial thing to note about origin stories is that they function as foundational narratives, effectively setting uncontested and quasi-ontological terms for political identity, aspiration, and legitimacy. In short, though politically motivated, origin stories are perversely antipolitical, in the sense that they “confer upon politics the permanence of nature” (p. 10). Origin stories have a number of other troubling aspects and effects, including “their manipulation of history, their naturalization of conventional political relations, and their function as justificatory scripts of citizenship” (p. 22). The myth of the metals from Plato's Republic offers an exemplary case of the origin story: “the autochthonous myth of the metals justifies and elicits consent to a hierarchical ordering of classes in the republic” (p. 4).

Political Exclusion and Domination: Nomos XLVI. Edited by Melissa S. Williams and Stephen Macedo. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 400p. $55.00.

This book is a collection of 14 essays dedicated to John Rawls, and all of them fit perfectly with the overriding concern with justice that lies at the core of Rawlsian theory. My review concentrates on some of these essays.

On Populist Reason. By Ernesto Laclau. New York: Verso, 2005. 224p. $26.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. Edited by Francisco Panizza. New York: Verso, 2005. 288p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

In the wake of Thomas Frank's bestselling book What's the Matter With Kansas (2004), scholars and citizens are turning to the concept of populism as a way to make sense of the strength and popularity of the far Right in the United States. In order to unravel the puzzle of why working-class voters would enthusiastically support a political party that is committed to cutting taxes for the wealthy, dismantling popular social programs, and subsidizing corporate welfare, scholars need to jettison the old Marxist-inspired paradigm that assumes that political identities are products of economic interests. At least that is one of the lessons of Ernesto Laclau's fascinating book.

Indeterminacy and Society. By Russell Hardin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 192p. $39.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Russell Hardin aims in this wide-ranging text to explain the sources of indeterminacy in social life, its implications for theory, and its consequences for practice. Indeterminacy marks circumstances in which individual and collective actors cannot determine the results or outcomes of their choices, not so much because of lack of power or causal ignorance (which might be remedied) but because the social world characteristically presents them with stochastic and strategic problems, and therefore forces on them stochastic and strategic choices. The two problems are distinct but often related. Stochastic problems arise whenever choice carries with it the possibility of harm; in many social and political contexts, the possibilities and the identities of those harmed may or may not be known, and these factors matter in ways Hardin discusses.