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The Great Tax Wars: Lincoln to Wilson -- The Fierce Battles over Money and Power That Transformed the Nation, by Steven R. Weisman
Weisman is a journalist, not a historian, and has spent a lot of time writing op-ed pieces. It shows. This does not match my usual standards for history. Weisman on more than one occasion repeats judgments of previous general historians (Beard pops up a couple of times in this regard) without any obvious thought on the matter.
That said, this is an enlightening overview of how we wound up with an Income Tax (and the constitutional amendment to support it), and why its rates have varied so dizzyingly over the decades. Weisman does a nice job of dissecting the rhetoric, which as a history snob I would attribute to his delving into primary sources, notably the Congressional Record. The Epilogue is one of the best Epilogues I've ever read, a masterly whirlwind summary of post-WW1 modifications to the rate structure of the income tax, the politics behind those changes, the global political and economic environments that generated the impetus for those changes and so on.
Unusually, I found I enjoyed the book most read about a chapter at a time. I won't know until I read another book whether this is a new pattern for me (Maurice last month was the same way) or if it's just that this book was a bit of a slog. Very worthwhile, although I probably will not keep my copy.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created December 9, 2002 Updated December 9, 2002