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Martin Carnoy in his book "The State and Political Theory," has produced a careful, even painstaking review of recent Marxist debates on the state that will provide an excellent introduction for students to the intricacies of this topic. Carnoy's major concern throughout is to give a comprehensible and fair summary of the positions of the various theorists. He succeeds at this and the writing is lucid even when he is dealing with opaque arguments. The main issue on which he consistently presses his own position is the relationship between socialism and democracy. He summarizes the major threads of liberal and classical Marxist political theory and then devotes considerable space to explicating the positions of Marxist theoreticians Antonio Gramsci, Louis Aithusser, and Nicos Poulantzas. Separate chapters are devoted to recent German contributions to state theory-particularly those of Joachim Hirsch and Claus Offe, to the Italian debate on democracy and socialism, and to recent perspectives on the state in developing societies, with particular emphasis on Latin America.