Glen O'Hara. Governing Post-War Britain

Glen O'Hara's synoptic title is somewhat misleading for a book with twelve rather specific chapters on disparate topics (of which four have already been published in academic journals). The chapters are united, however, by a double paradox: by the mounting public distrust of British governments (whether Labour or Conservative) during these years of growing affluence, and by “the unintended consequences of purposive government action” (p. 2). Most people prefer to take their history “neat,” but O'Hara's sixty pages of endnotes and thirty-nine-page bibliography do not free the book's two hundred pages of text from an encrustation of secondary references that will deter any but the most dedicated reader. This is a pity, because O'Hara's perspective is broad in both subject matter and area of inquiry, his research is resourceful and well documented, his index is well differentiated, and his topics are important not just for British but also for American readers.

Action (physics) · Aesthetics · Art · Distrust · Economic history · Government (linguistics) · Index (typography) · Library science · Literature · Media studies · Period (music) · Perspective (graphical) · Pity · Political science · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Subject matter · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies