Sarah S. Elkind, How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy: Business, Power, and the Environment in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2011)

Reviewed by Art Menius August 13, 2015

I came upon Sarah Elkind’s How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy: Business, Power, and the Environment in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles from 2011 quite serendipitously. I am grateful that I did because she covers a vital and under explored period in American localism history before, during, and after the Anti-Chain Store movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Elkind also examines how public attitudes toward progressive federal government action on the ground level changed after World War II in ways that would emerge powerfully after 1980 in neoliberalism. Most important for localism, the methods studied by Elkind suggest ways that twenty first century localists can wield greater political power.

Elkind, who teaches and manages the Public History Internship Program at San Diego…