Sheldon D. Pollack   Professor of Law, Legal Studies & Political Science Lerner College of Business & Economics University of Delaware Newark, DE  19716   Office:  Purnell 216 (302) 831-1803  tel. (302) 831-4676  fax email:  pollack@udel.edu

 

 

Sheldon D. Pollack, The Failure of U.S. Tax Policy: Revenue and Politics

(University Park: Penn State Press, 1996).

                       

 

 

 

FROM THE REVIEWS:

 

 

"Overall this book is an indispensable source of historical information and provides the structure necessary for meaningful discussions of tax issues of concern to policy makers, academics and tax professionals."

    — Journal of the American Taxation Association

 

"The Failure of U.S. Tax Policy is excellent reference material for policymakers, analysts, economists, educators, and students of national fiscal policy. Business, economics, and political science professors would do well to place it on their required reading list."

    — Perspectives on Political Science

 

"Pollack looks at tax policy in practice, especially the recent history of tax legislation. He emphasizes the inherent political character of any debate over taxes and observes that external events, such as wars, have far more effect on how we are taxed than academic theories. Scholars take note."

    — The Wall Street Journal

 

"The Failure of U.S. Tax Policy presents a useful and critical account of the development and revision of the federal income tax. It especially stresses inconsistencies, the lack of commitment to clear principle-a problem long associated with interest group influences, but grown worse under the changed economic and political conditions of the 1980s and 1990s, all points that are documented carefully. Many readers will find it to be indispensable as both a source of factual information and thoughtful interpretation."

    — David R. Beam, Tax Notes

 

"This book has enormous intellectual and scholarly breadth. It makes significant contributions to our understanding of tax policy, political theory, and political economy."

    — John F. Witte, author of The Politics and Development of the Federal Income Tax

 

"Overall this book is an indispensable source of historical information and provides the structure necessary for meaningful discussions of tax issues of concern to policy makers, academics and tax professionals. I highly recommend this book . . . "

    — Thomas C. Omer, The Journal of the American Taxation Association

 

        FULL REVIEWS:

Jane Gravelle in Political Science Quarterly (Winter 1997–1998) click here

Susan Hansen in Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science (November 1998), click here

 

Bruce Bartlett in The Wall Street Journal (December 24, 1996),click here

Dale Nesbary in Perspectives on Political Science (Summer 1997), click here

David Beam in Tax Notes (June 22, 1998), click here

Thomas C. Omer in The Journal of the American Taxation Association (Spring 1999), click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sheldon D. Pollack   Professor of Law & Legal Studies Lerner College of Business & Economics University of Delaware Newark, DE  19716   Office:  Purnell 216 (302) 831-1803  tel. (302) 831-4676  fax email:  pollack@udel.edu

 

 

Sheldon D. Pollack, Refinancing America: The Republican Antitax Agenda

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003).

 

                        

 

FROM THE REVIEWS:

"Refinancing America: The Republican Antitax Agenda is a thoroughly researched and well-written description of tax and related economic policy in the U.S. over the past several decades. . . The book is very reader-friendly, even to the beginner student of tax and economic policy."

 

    — John McGowan, St. Louis University

 

 

 

"Voters should not be swayed by the seductive, yet often misleading, packaging of either political party. Professor Pollack's excellent behind-the-scenes look at the legislative process will give voters, as well as policymakers in Washington, grounds for resisting those who propose easy solutions to some complicated tax policy problems."

 

    — Jay Soled, Rutgers University

 

 

 

FULL REVIEWS:

 

Jay Soled in Tax Notes (Dec. 8, 2003), click here

 

John McGowan in The Journal of the American Taxation Association (Spring 2004), click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sheldon D. Pollack   Professor of Law & Legal Studies Lerner College of Business & Economics University of Delaware Newark, DE  19716   Office:  Purnell 216 (302) 831-1803  tel. (302) 831-4676  fax email:  pollack@udel.edu

 

 

Sheldon D. Pollack, War, Revenue, and State Building: Financing the Development of the American State (Cornell University Press, 2009).

 

 

               

 

FROM THE REVIEWS:

 

"In War, Revenue, and State Building, Sheldon D. Pollack shows a masterful grasp of an enormous range of scholarship in history and American political development. His impressively comparative perspective ensures that this book could be put to good use in a number of courses on American political development. In Pollack's view, the American state, which had virtually no tax capacity at its birth, has developed a very effective revenue system today—one largely shaped by the nation's wartime experiences."

 

    — David Brian Robertson, University of Missouri–St. Louis

 

"In the crisply written War, Revenue, and State Building, Sheldon D. Pollack analyzes the influence of internal and external variables on state formation and war-making in a systematic fashion. Pollack is adept at producing a narrative that allows the reader to draw their own conclusions from the arguments he deploys."

 

    — Andrew D. Grossman, Royal G. Hall Professor of the Social Sciences, Albion College

"How does a presumed 'antistatist' polity maintain a military apparatus the size of all the other militaries in the world put together and a social welfare state as well? As Sheldon D. Pollack tells us, that is quite a feat, and it demands (and has gotten, since 1913), a highly efficient taxation apparatus. Whether the American state can continue to meet these extraordinary demands is the very big question Pollack asks as he reconstructs the political history of the national revenue state from the beginning to the present, enmeshing it in a rich tapestry of theoretical and comparative observations. A must for students of American political development."

 

    — Elizabeth Sanders, Cornell University

 

 

"This is an overwhelmingly impressive piece of work in terms of its grasp and analysis of a wide range of literatures." 

 

    — Leslie Friedman Goldstein, University of Delaware

 

 

"A remarkably clear-eyed view of the nature of the state and its operations."

 

   — Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute

 

 

"Pollack uses comparison to show that similar causal mechanisms operate in very different social environments, and, most provocatively, to show that the basic dynamics of state formation in this precocious industrial democracy were similar to those in the agrarian autocracies of early modern Europe."

 

   — Isaac William Martin, University of California, San Diego

 

 

"Sheldon D. Pollack's new book, War, Revenue, and State Building: Financing the Development of the American State, is the latest addition to a growing literature that investigates how the process of revenue extraction that accompanied wars shaped American political development. Through his prodigious research in the vast secondary sources on state-formation and American history, Pollack places the American experience in a broader theoretical and comparative perspective"

 

   — Ajay K. Mehrotra, Indiana University–Bloomington

 

 

FULL REVIEWS:

 

Leslie Friedman Goldstein in the Law & Politics Book Review, Vol. 19 (October 5, 2009): 729-732, click here

 

Justin Logan in The American Conservative (March 2010), click here

 

Doug Bandow in The Washington Times (March 16, 2010), click here or here

Robert Higgs in Journal of Policy History (April 2011), click here

T.A. Aiello for American Library Association, click here

Cameron Thies in Journal of Peace Research (November 2010), click here

Isaac William Martin in Perspectives on Politics (September 2011), click here

Ajay K. Mehrotra in American Journal of Legal History (October 2012), click here

 

 

 

 

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