Book reviews

Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography (London: Fourth Estate, 1999). Pp.xiii + 402, illus., bibliog., index. £16.99. ISBN 1–85702–879–1

Alan Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (London: HarperCollins, 1999). Pp.501, illus., bibliog., index. £19.99. ISBN 0–00–255901–3.

Michael Smith, Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets (London: Channel 4 Books, 1999). Pp.184, 8pp illus., bibliog., index. £14.99. ISBN 0–7522–2189–2.

Hugh Skillen (ed.), The Enigma Symposium, 1998 (Privately printed, 1998). Pp.ix + 205, illus., facsims., no index. £9.95. ISBN 0–95–313300–1.

Frank B. Rowlett and David Kahn, The Story of Magic, Memoirs of an American Cryptologic Pioneer (Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1998). Pp.266, 12 b/w photos., no index. $32.80. ISBN 0–8941–2273–8.

David Alvarez, Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930–1945. (Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas 2000). Pp.292, photos, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–7006–1013–8.

Michael E. Haas, In the Devil's Shadow: U.N. Special Operations During the Korean War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000). Pp.xx + 243, 1 map, 5 illus, 26 photos, notes, bibliog., index, chronology. $29.95; £26.50. ISBN 1–55750–344–3.

Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). Pp.257, bibliog., index. £31.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). ISBN 0–8078–2461–5.

L. V. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Macmillan Press, 1999). Pp.x + 251, bibliog., index. £45; $65. ISBN 0–333–71470–9.

Ezra Y. Siff, Why the Senate Slept: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Beginning of America's Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999). Pp.xi + 172, illus., notes, bibliog., appendices, index. $37.50. ISBN 0–275–96389–6.

Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). Pp.xxv + 529, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–520–21511–7.

John Prados, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York: John Wiley, 1999). Pp.432, index. $35. ISBN 0–471–25465–7.

Kenneth Conboy and Dale Andrade, Spies & Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000). Pp.347, illus., bibliog., index. $34.95. ISBN 0–7006–1002–2.

Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). Pp.232, index. $24.50/£17.38 (paper). ISBN 0–271–01791–0.

Thomas K. Adams, US Special Operations Forces in Action: The Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1998). Pp.xxviii + 360, 11 photos, glossary of acronyms and terms, bibliog., index. £42.50/$59.50 (cloth); £19.50/$27.50 (paper). ISBN 0–7146–4795–0 and ‐4350–5.     

Further reflections on the ontology of money: responses to Lapavitsas and Dodd

Abstract

The debate on the nature of money, its origins and conditions of existence has been recently taken further in separate articles in Economy and Society by Lapavitsas and Dodd. Both criticize Ingham's elaboration of Keynes's contention that the money of account is the primary concept in a theory of money. Lapavitisas reiterates and extends his Marxist analysis of money's origins as a universal equivalent in commodity exchange. This fails to explain the existence of a money of account, without which genuinely market exchange cannot take place. Dodd's claim to furnish a much-needed analytical refinement in the analysis of money, used to criticize Ingham's position, is shown to be based on a re-statement of an established and widely accepted distinction in monetary theory.     

Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge

Party cues provide citizens with low‐cost information about their representatives’ policy positions. But what happens when elected officials deviate from the party line? Relying on the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we examine citizens’ knowledge of their senators’ positions on seven high‐profile roll‐call votes. We find that although politically interested citizens are the group most likely to know their senator's position when she votes with the party, they are also the group most likely to incorrectly identify their senator's position when she votes against her party. The results indicate that when heuristics “go bad,” it is the norm for the most attentive segment of the public to become the most misinformed, revealing an important drawback to heuristic use.     

What Made Me a Legal Aid Lawyer?

This article is a contribution to the occasional series dealing with a major book that influenced the author. Previous contributors include Stewart Macaulay, John Griffith, William Twining, and Carol Harlow.