Boundaries of the State in U.S. History

Abstract

Boundaries of the State in U.S. History, edited by James T. Sparrow, William T. Novak, and Stephen W. Sawyer, demonstrates that scholars have brought the state back into studies of American history and politics. The book, which examines state action in international and domestic politics across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, frustrates concise summarization or critique. The first set of chapters include Gautham Rao's study of government health care provision in nineteenth-century maritime hospitals; Sawyer's examination of Alexis de Tocqueville's and Adolphe Thiers's political visions; C. J. Alverez's look at the creation of the U.S.-Mexico border; Sparrow's fascinating study of how the American and British governments monitored public opinion during World War II; and Jason Scott Smith's Karl Polanyi–inspired analysis of state and corporate cooperation in post–World War II reconstruction and development. While offering important studies of the American state's actions, the chapters' implications are sometimes unclear. Thus, while Rao persuasively demonstrates that state health care provision began far earlier than is recognized, government provision of medical care for a limited segment of the work force may cut against his argument, as it reveals the American state's reluctance to extend medical assistance to the general public. Similarly, few dispute that the state was active in monitoring public opinion during World War II and postwar reconstruction, or in drafting borders.