525 Public Choice 93: 525–527, 1997. Roger Middleton, Government versus the market: The growth of the public sector, economic management, and British economic performance, 1890– 1979. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1996. 756 pages. $119.95 (cloth). Some books invite a very straightforward and simple assessment based on soundness and originality of logic and evidence, importance of the subject matter, and readability. In contrast, reviewing a contribution to economic history which covers nearly a century of activity and pursues as many objec- tives as Middleton’s Government versus the market quickly shoots off into n-dimensions not easily addressed by a couple of questions or summarized in three or four pages. Foremost, any reader should know this is a big, big book with wide-ranging aims. It recapitulates a century’s worth of important economic and political events in vast detail; it presents a staggering amount of descriptive evidence related to UK economic performance, containing over two hundred tables and figures; it summarizes the viewpoints of seemingly every economist, policy wonk, and political figure of any note in Britain over the past century, leading to over 1700 bibliographic entries; and, for good measure, it appraises the validity of various theories behind UK public sector growth in the twentieth century. As a guide, textbook, or even a reference book covering the history of political economy in the UK this century and the history of thought (not just by economists) related to UK political economy, Middleton has made a significant contribution. His level of scholarship in collecting and organizing all of the facts in this book is an impressive accomplishment in itself. The 1700-plus references are not, seemingly, just plucked out of secondary sources or computer-based searches. His prose indicates an acquaintance with and in many case an intimate knowledge of the works surveyed, cited, and quoted. A person with very little knowledge of UK political economy could read this book and soon become immersed in it, while even those with a substantial knowledge of it could not help but bolster their information set. In the midst of all of the lavish detail and multiple layers, Middleton also manages to consistently pursue certain objectives which increase the value of his contribution. Broadly speaking, the book follows a consistent organiza- tional pattern, presenting economic performance data first, then detailing how political events intertwine with the economic events, and finally covering and assessing economic theories related to these events. The two hundred-plus tables and figures are not just disconnected odds and ends. International com- parisons repeatedly crop up in informative ways based on important denom-