Customer Reviews

Paving the Way: New York Road Building and the American State, 1880-1956

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I used this book as a text in one of my Senior courses in Political Science. The theme of the course was Bureaucratic Growth and Development. Fein's book was well-recieved by the students. The book carefully lays out the slow and deliberate accretion of authority by the Highway Department in New York and the eclipse of the local institutions that had dominated highway policy. Without the usual conspiracy theories or hagiography that attaches to many accounts of highway development policy. One of the arguements of the book, that the state highway building process and institutional structures were established well before the expansion of federal highway funding in the U.S., is nicely developed. The only shortcoming of this fine book is its price. I wish it were published in a paperbound edition. I look forward to reading more of Prof. Fein's work.