Larry G. Gerber. The Irony of State Intervention: American Industrial Relations Policy in Comparative Perspective, 1914-1939. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. viii + 212 pp. ISBN 0-87580-347-4, $40.00.

This is a most interesting comparative study of labor relationsin the United States and Britain across the divide of WorldWar I and encompassing the whole of the interwar period. A concludingchapter provides retrospective insights derived from post-1945experience in both countries. The author’s central concernis to resolve the paradox of the long-established American commitmentto small government ("antistatism")