Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds: Universities, Leadership,and the Development of the American State. By Mark R.Nemec. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 312p. $70.00cloth, $24.95 paper.

The end of the Civil War ushered a new era in American state-buildingas the government sought to reshape the structure and identity ofpolitics, group formation, and individual identity. During thisperiod, nongovernmental agencies became central to disseminating andlegitimating state authority. Although universities have beenrecognized as influential agencies, Mark R. Nemec argues that priorworks overlooked the process by which they gained this influence. InIvory Towers and Nationalist Minds, Nemecilluminates the rise of American universities as active partners andindependent agents of state building from 1862 to 1920. Universitiesprovided services to national development through promotingdemocratic ideals, industrial competitiveness, and intellectualvanguardism. Primarily through the “institutional entrepreneurship”of university presidents, American universities rapidly expandedtheir role and influence in society. Rather than the government, itwas the university leaders who took the leading role to define whattheir universities would become.