Overorganized And Overroutinized

People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the Mixed System
by Paul Goodman
Random House, 1965, 247 pp., $4.95

In a Few Hands: Monopoly in America
by Estes Kefauver (with the assistance of Irene Till)
Pantheon, 1965, 239 pp., $4.95

American liberalism has traditionally been of three kinds: reforming and thus oriented toward government; muckraking, with or without some specific political orientation; and antigovernmental pastoral utopian. The last two, which at times have had an affinity for each other, are always considered by those who write our “official” histories to be hopelessly unstylish and obviously inferior to their more solidly respectable relative. For those who need the evidence, two recent books by Estes Kefauver (published posthumously) and Paul Goodman demonstrate how questionable is this official version.

Kefauve...