Historians increasingly recognize the significance of Richard Nixon's domestic agenda in shaping America in the 1970s and beyond. Kevin Yuill's important and well-researched book contributes significantly to our understanding of the affirmative-action policies promoted by this Republican president. As scholars like Dean Kotlowski have noted, Nixon's civil rights record was an inconsistent mix of apparent liberalism with regard to minority hiring and conservative retrenchment in areas like school desegregation, open housing and antipoverty initiatives. Yuill's explanation for this focusses on the moderate nature of affirmative action in comparison with other means of promoting racial equality, particularly in terms of public job programs targeted at African Americans.

Combining the political theory of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls with extensive archival research, Yuill argues that Nixon's civil rights initiatives were designed in the context of the “legitimation crisis” of the late 1960s to keep racial tensions within manageable limits. In his view it was elite concerns about race riots and spreading social disorder rather than the agitation of civil rights activists that led to the incorporation of affirmative action into the Nixon administration's agenda. Conservatives were “the first advocates” of such programs that entailed less redistribution, cost and government intervention than Humphrey Hawkins-style full-employment policies that aimed to eliminate racial inequality.

The book is organized into three sections covering the origins of affirmative action in the postwar period, the implementation of Nixon's policies, and their legacy. While recognizing the limitations of affirmative action as an antipoverty program, civil rights activist Roger Wilkins – among others – has praised its significance in the creation of a black middle class. For Yuill this bears testimony more to the program's weakness than to its strength. Using a Habermasian concept, he argues that the program produced the “clientalization” of groups into dependency on recognition and appropriate restitution by the state or a quasi-state agency and that the measure of its success was its service to the group rather than to individuals. In his view this was not a formula for containment rather than eradication of racial inequality.

Not everyone will agree with Yuill's arguments but few will question that they are cogently made and contribute insightfully to the growing historiography of the 1970s. There are places where the author overstates matters to the detriment of his broader case – not least in the final sentence of the book – and where he might have better clarified issues – not least in his rather vague definition of affirmative action (6). Such quibbles aside, this book should be essential reading for scholars with an interest in Nixon, the transformation of liberalism in the 1970s, and civil rights.