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In her three case studies (the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906; highway policy making, 1900-193Os; and, child-mother health issues and passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921), Johnson notes that Congress created intergovernmental institutions designed to bring some centralized focus to problems while also respecting the constitutional power of the states.

Governing the American State: Congress and the New Federalism, 1877-1929. By Kimberley S. Johnson. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xii, 226 pp. $35.00, isbn 978-0-691-11974-8.)

Kimberly S. Johnson, a political scientist at Barnard College, Columbia University, offers a welcome reminder to historians of the modern United States: New Deal policy making was not a seamless transition to more centralized policy making in Washington. Rather, it was based on a federalist heritage of power sharing among the states and the national government that stretched back to the nineteenth century. While James Patterson, in his important book The New Deal and the States (1969), analyzed the 1930s and the consequences of New Deal policy on the states, Johnson focuses on the period before the 1930s and on congressional attempts to respond to national issues with mixed national-state policy solutions. She argues that the transition to the executivedirected national policy-making model Patterson identified for the 1930s originated in a nuanced balancing act shaped by Congress from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s.

This book is generally a product of political science (it begins with a definition of the "new New Federalism," followed by a chapter on context, three case-study chapters, and a conclusion), but it rests more on its historical case-study analyses than on pathbreaking political science technique. The notes are valuable reading in themselves, for they reflect an overview of federalism that includes contemporary sources and secondary analyses from the 1960s to recent times.

The "new New Federalism," in Johnson's approach, undercuts the more simplistic dichotomy normally assumed since Patterson's work appeared-limited government at both state and national levels supplanted in the 1930s with a more centralized, cooperative welfare state approach. In her three case studies (the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906; highway policy making, 1900-193Os; and, child-mother health issues and passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921), Johnson notes that Congress created intergovernmental institutions designed to bring some centralized focus to problems while also respecting the constitutional power of the states. Usually, Congress established a weak national component and mandated stronger state action. Uneven success with these intergovernmental policy structures (some states followed through while others did not) laid the groundwork for more national input and direction by the 1930s. Still, Johnson argues, the New Deal reflected continuity with the first new federalism era more than it did a sharp turn toward centralized control; the real break, she asserts, came with the Great Society.

This slim volume contributes to our understanding of the evolution of federalism and its effect on American-style policy making. It could have noted more connections to other examples of federalism (for example, in regulation and the use of state compacts). Yet, in an era when many Americans view government as the problem, this book reminds us that the current state of affairs emerged from a complex, nuanced mixture of constitutional forces, interest group pressures, and congressional developments.