In this volume, Wilbur Rich joins the handful of scholars who have studied the politics of public personnel administration. His book constitutes an ambitious attempt to provide historical perspective on the deadly serious struggle for power and in New York City's personnel (p. 151). Rich devotes particular attention to four groups that have shaped this city's personnel policies. The genteel reformers consisted of nineteenth-century liberal Republicans and reform Democrats who sought to cleanse the city of corrupting influences through personnel reform. Academic reformers, primarily management consultants, academics, and researchers, followed. This group sought to improve the personnel system by introducing scientific principles of management via management training and other means. Fiscal managers accountants, investment specialists, and lawyers surged to the fore during the city's fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. While the actions of this group have reverberated through the personnel system, Rich argues that the fiscal managers are distinguished from prior reform groups by their lack of coherent policy toward the civil service (p. 5). Aside from these three reform elements, Rich considers another pivotal actor-the unions. While a focus on these four groups drives Rich's analysis, he also devotes a chapter to explaining the ways in which groups, politicis, and negotiations affect such personnel functions as labor planning and selection and the handling of grievances. Although Rich doubts that the city's work practices can be effectively reformed (p. 161), a final chapter recommends certain ameliorations. Rich's volume at times reveals considerable insight, especially in the two chapters on the genteel and academic reformers. In dealing with the genteel reformers, for instance, Rich perceptively sorts out three connotations of the term merit-merit as a struggle among individuals in a form of social Darwinism, as a moral imperative for purifying local government, and as the opposite of patronage. Some of Rich's other observations, such as his argument about the insularity and low level of professionalism in New York City's bureaucracy, also prove intriguing. If the volume at times gratifies, however, it also frustrates. Perhaps in part because of its ambitious scope, the analysis often seem superficial. Observations appear that whet the reader's appetite but then get dropped before they can satiate. For instance, Rich bemoans the demise of party influence in personnel policy (pp. 156-57), but other than briefly citing E. E. Schattschneider and Supreme Court Justice Powell, he never develops this potentially fruitful line of inquiry. If parties become stronger, precisely how might that benefit personnel practices and the overall functioning of city politics? The normative posture adopted by the book also proves confusing at many points. While early in the volume Rich asserts that he will not offer any normative judgments about the groups competing in the public personnel arena (p. 14), these judgments subsequently surface. He suggests, for instance, that New Yorkers should welcome the arrival of the new fiscal managers (p. 122) and considers the city's response to union demands as all too often dubious policy of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul (p. 97).