These two books concern major chapters in the history of mass housing:Amsterdam in the first two decades of the century and “Red Vienna.”Both programs were models of state welfare reform, but the political contextsare totally at odds: Amsterdam, with its settlement initiatives achieved througha corporatist compromise among moderate parties, and Vienna, where the SocialDemocrats attempted literally to build socialism in the midst of “a highlycharged, often violent political conflict between left and right” (Blau,13).