Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States: A Reader. Edited with introductions by David C. Hammack. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Pp. xix, 481. $19.95, paper

At the dawn of the twenty-first century American historians are unusually qualified to advise on social policy. With the passage in 1996 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, much of the nation's system of public assistance for the poor was given back to the states and localities. President Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it,†and he did. But President Clinton did not abolish welfare: in dimensions financial, legal, administrative, and moral, too polyphonous to name here, the new system is trying to revive welfare as historians of the 1870s know it. Likewise, with the inauguration of President-elect George W. Bush, the government's social services—from poverty alleviation to drug abuse treatment—will go, Bush promises, increasingly into the hands of faith-based groups. Of course the economic viability and the constitutionality of the faith-based subsidy is being challenged. And again, history offers ample precedent. The vision of the President-elect, and the immediate reactions against it, are reminiscent of the 1820s and of the 1870s–1900s movement to organize charity. So it is especially fortunate that the historian David C. Hammack has published the essays and excerpts that comprise Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States: A Reader.