Review by Choice Review
Only two of the nine chapters in this volume appear here in print for the first time-one on antiparty thought in the Gilded Age; the other reviewing ``The Social Analysis of American Politics'' in the 20 years since the 1965 article of that title by Samuel P. Hays. The rest of the book deals with such apparently disparate topics as the ethnocultural interpretation of 19th-century American politics and the origins of the progressive movement. These essays have been previously published, for the most part in readily accessible scholarly journals. McCormick, however, is a sufficiently penetrating analyst to justify bringing those pieces together in book form. There is as the common theme a focus upon the bases, structure, and functions of mass political parties, from their emergence in the 1820s and 1830s to the early 20th century. During that period, McCormick concludes, parties did not simply provide the ``main means of political participation,'' but constituted the major instrumentality for determining ``the distribution of resources and privileges. ... {{V}}oting and economic policy had met and interacted through the parties that managed them both'' (p. 226-27). Upper-division undergraduates.-J. Braeman, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
