Books in Brief

The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, by Philip K. Howard (Random, 187 pp., $18)

STEADY readers of national review will not be startled by the disturbing stories of government senselessness that Philip Howard has stuffed into this readable little book. You already know about the volumes of regulations that serve no purpose other than to embolden bureaucrats and hinder businessmen. You will not be surprised to hear that OSHA is more concerned with railing heights at a perfectly safe brick-making factory than with vats of poisonous blood that kill workers at a meat-packing plant. The spirit of the book is outrage. Faced with a staggering mass of evidence of government tyranny, Mr. Howard harks back to the days when government did things quickly and grandly, and nobody asked any questions. “Perhaps the greatest testimony to their accomplishments,” Howard writes of such New Dealers as Ickes, Tugwell, Hopkins, and Corcoran, “is that we still remember their names.” Mr. Howard should be praised for his assiduous research and lively prose. His New Deal reverie we can do without.

GM

About the Author

Geoffrey Morris

DA

About the Author

Danielle Allen

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant university professor at Harvard University, and a former candidate for governor of Massachusetts.

PW

About the Author

Peter Welsh

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The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, by Philip K. Howard (Random, 187 pp., $18)

STEADY readers of national review will not be startled by the disturbing stories of government senselessness that Philip Howard has stuffed into this readable little book. You already know about the volumes of regulations that serve no purpose other than to embolden bureaucrats and hinder businessmen. You will not be surprised to hear that OSHA is more concerned with railing heights at a perfectly safe brick-making factory than with vats of poisonous blood that kill workers at a meat-packing plant. The spirit of the book is outrage. Faced with a staggering mass of evidence of government tyranny, Mr. Howard harks back to the days when government did things quickly and grandly, and nobody asked any questions. “Perhaps the greatest testimony to their accomplishments,” Howard writes of such New Dealers as Ickes, Tugwell, Hopkins, and Corcoran, “is that we still remember their names.” Mr. Howard should be praised for his assiduous research and lively prose. His New Deal reverie we can do without.