At the heart of this book lies an intriguing idea. Brett Christophers argues that the state under capitalism must steer markets between the twin poles of stagnant monopoly and cutthroat competition using the tools of antitrust and intellectual property (IP) law. He argues that in the Western economies of the late nineteenth century an “excess” of competition and low profits caused the state to expand IP-based monopolies. By contrast, the period after World War II was defined by an “excess” of monopolistic stagnation, which the state attacked with more vigorous antitrust suits. The author cites evidence that we are returning to an IP monopoly age.

Christophers applies his theory to all Western economies, but focuses his history on Great Britain and the United States. The book's timeline in Great Britain appears firm. Britain's 1883 Patent Act loosened filing requirements and fees, while its 1891 Mogul Steamship decision loosened legal restraints on “conspiracy in restraint of trade.” In 1948 and 1956, by contrast, the British passed their first competition laws to restrict monopolies.

In the United States, however, the book's timeline is more tenuous. The author is at pains to explain why the 1890 Sherman and 1914 Clayton antitrust acts passed in the era of supposed state-encouraged monopoly. He shows that cases such as the Supreme Court's E. Bennett & Sons v. National Harrow Company (1902) gave IP rights preeminence over antitrust law where they conflicted. Yet this limited exception to the new antitrust hardly proves the rule that “the state” was a unified force for monopoly.

In the post-World War II era, as Christophers argues, the United States did pursue a vigorous antitrust policy. The 1950 Celler-Kefauver Act, the strict 1968 Department of Justice guidelines on mergers, and a host of Supreme Court decisions, all testified to a fresh concern about concentration and market power. Yet Christophers does not explain why American oligopolies attained their unquestioned zenith in these decades. The uninvestigated reason for the seeming contradiction is that antitrust in this era was directed at small concerns. The author notes Herbert Hovenkamp's statement that the “Supreme Court condemned mergers at market concentration levels that would be considered hilarious by today's standards.” (181), but does not explain how attacks on small mergers left larger existing companies at peace. There is no mention of the Supreme Court's infamous Brown Shoe v. United States (1962) decision, which struck down a merger that captured less than 5% of the shoe market, even while companies like AT&T and General Motors remained untouched.

Besides the history and theory, almost 100 pages of the book are devoted to an intricate parsing of Marxist economics, on which the ideas of the book are based. For those not well-versed in this literature, the exercise can appear scholastic. Instead of evidence supporting one argument over another, the author solves conflicts with gestures to texts. In the tradition of Marxist economics, the book argues that the state's duty under capitalism is “reproducing capitalism” and ensuring its survival. In the author's mind, this necessity determined the course of antitrust and IP law. Yet the claim that in order to survive capitalism required a narrow path of profits, somewhere between the Scylla of laissez-faire competition and the Charybdis of IP monopoly, is questionable. More dubious is the claim that even before this path was articulated, “the state” acted as a unified body to steer capitalism through it. The state's efforts in this book, largely consist of unconscious determinations of capitalist necessity, and so there is little investigation of historical actors and their influence on law. For instance, Christophers does not discuss the strange fact that IP and antitrust both remain the most notable areas of judge-made law, or how this shaped the course of their development.

Christophers's book offers a stimulating theory and an original line of research. Yet for those not wedded to historical determinism or Marxist economics, it leaves one craving more detail and nuance.