Joseph Thorndike (Tax Analysts) has a new review of Vanessa Williams’s (Brookings) new book The Price of Democracy in this week’s Tax Notes. Here is the intro:

Most histories of American democracy start with voting rights or constitutional design. But Vanessa Williamson begins with a different focus: She wants to know who’s picking up the tab.

In her new book, The Price of Democracy, Williamson puts tax at the center of our long national debate over who wields power in America — and who gets shut out. From the Boston Tea Party to the Whiskey Rebellion, and from the rise of the income tax to the property tax revolts of the 1970s, Americans have been fighting about taxation. But few of these arguments can be reduced to simple disputes about dollars and cents.