Tales of the State

Tales of the State offers interesting examples of the role of the stories, or narratives, in politics and public policy. The collection overall makes important contributions to a more pluralistic approach to policy analysis. The book contributes to its goal, and it is one worthy of more attention from political scientists. * American Political Science Review *
A fascinating, infuriating, eye-opening book. It succeeds in wedding high literary and anthropological theory with the mundane details of presidents' politicking and policy-makers' number crunching. Readers will swing between resistance to thinking of their own perspective as merely a narrative, and sudden awareness of how this framing really does illuminate some puzzling aspects of the American polity. They may not be fully convinced, but they will certainly be better off for wrestling with the issuesthat this book so cleverly raises... -- Jennifer Hochschild, Princeton University, author of Facing Up to the American Dream
A fascinating, infuriating, eye-opening book. It succeeds in wedding high literary and anthropological theory with the mundane details of presidents' politicking and policy-makers' number crunching. Readers will swing between resistance to thinking of their own perspective as "merely" a narrative, and sudden awareness of how this framing really does illuminate some puzzling aspects of the American polity. They may not be fully convinced, but they will certainly be better off for wrestling with the issues that this book so cleverly raises. -- Jennifer Hochschild, Princeton University; author of Facing Up to the American Dream