This is a well written and concise account of the mechanisms by which wealthy individuals and corporate interests manipulate the legislative process. Anyone who wants to understand why, despite clean-air legislation, we do not have clean air, or why tax cuts always seem to be for other people, should read this book. The authors supply cogently argued solutions as well as detailed analyses of why the political system needs fundamental reform.

Two years ago, many of us were at a conference in San Francisco that led to the new book, "Families at Work: Expanding the Bounds," edited by Naomi Gerstel, Dan Clawson, and Robert Zussman (Vanderbilt Press, 2002,[$$$]+shipping from amazon.com). I thought the conference was great, but the book is even better. Whether due to the judicious selection of chapters, or superb editing, the book serves as a great reader on work/family research, and particularly for qualitative research (I know,
some of the quant folks hit the ceiling when an 'N' of 36 pops up, but I find much of it very insightful). Many of the chapters are on topics where little is otherwise known -- including the division of labor among lesbigay couples, the meanings of reciprocity among single moms, how moms think about the needs of teenagers, how work & family have fit into the lives of political activists, and how being a 'nerd' translates into masculinity in
high-tech jobs. Two of the papers have already become classics of some sort -- a chapter from Francine Deutsch's "Halving It All" on blue-collar couples, and a chapter by Gerstel and Clawson on unions and w/f. A majority of the chapters have admittedly been published elsewhere already, but it would be very difficult to put all of the articles together yourself for, say, a course, and the book would work very well at the senior undergrad or grad level. Great work & congrats to the editors!

A sociological study of corporate PACs (Political Action Committees) which draws on anthropological work by Marcel Mauss concerning gift exchange (see The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies). Interestingly, campaign contributions act more like "gifts" than bribes, strengthening social networks, and creating obligations. It would seem that 90% of the legislation that corporations seek to pass invokes extremely narrow tax relief (covering only that corporation), though the wording is masked as it is very difficult to determine who the beneficiaries are. Also, this work broadly outlines what would be minimally acceptable for campaign finance reform- and the various bills that have been surfacing in Congress in the past 12 months don't even come close.