Robin L. Einhorn. American Taxation, American Slavery. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xii + 337 pp. ISBN 0-226-19487-6, $35.00.

Any neoconservative who rushes out to buy this book will bedisappointed. Its misleading title notwithstanding, this monographis not yet another diatribe against federal taxation, but rathera thoughtful examination of how the existence of slavery inthe young republic in the decades following the American Revolutionshaped national policies. If many Americans now trace the republic’spersistent anti-tax tendencies back to the Boston Tea Party,Robin Einhorn instead demonstrates that the origins of modernanti-government