Edward D. Berkowitz, professor of history at George Washington University, has participated in the making of social welfare policy as a policy analyst at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and as a senior staffmember of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties. He is the author of Disabled Policy: America's Programs for the Handicapped.

Readers of America's Welfare State will derive an excellent understanding of the complexity surrounding social welfare in the late 20th-century US. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Choice Useful for scholars and students both for its insights into the policy-making process and for its account of how American social policy arrived at the sorry state we find it in today. -- Jeffrey L. Davidson Contemporary Sociology A remarkably successful book... powerfully written and clearly of interest to scholars and policy experts alike. -- Ellis W. Hawley Labor History Berkowitz has gone behind the written statute and the official press release to find out who believed what and who did what to effect changes in the process and substantive aspects of welfare statism. This book is a worthy addition to the literature. -- Robert J. Lampman Industrial and Labor Relations Review

• Series Editor's ForewordPrefaceAcknowledgmentsChapter 1. IntroductionPart I. The Social Security CrisisChapter 2. Inventing Social Security, 1935Chapter 3. The Triump of Social Security, 1936-1954Chapter 4. The Day of ReckoningPart II. The Frustrations of Welfare ReformChapter 5. Welfare's State, 1935-1967Chapter 6. Welfare Restated, 1967-1988Part III. The Mirage of National Health InsuranceChapter 7. Medicare and Health Policy, 1935-1989Part IV. ConclusionChapter 8. Long-Term Care of the Welfare StateA Note on the SourcesIndex