"Mr. Taxpayer Versus Mr. Tax Spender"

Linda Upham-Bornstein is Senior Teaching Lecturer in History at Plymouth State University.

“Nobody else has comprehensively detailed the activities of tax protesters during the Great Depression, and Upham-Bornstein does this very effectively. This book will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that taxpayer politics are a long-standing American tradition. ‘Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender’ provides useful analyses of how these movements relate to trends in law and politics, as it provides a wealth of empirical details and richness for this relatively understudied topic.”-Lawrence Glickman, Professor of American Studies at Cornell University, and author of Free Enterprise: An American History “In the depth of the Great Depression, middle-class property owners spontaneously organized to ‘raise hell and lower taxes.’ This extensively researched, sensibly organized, and thoughtfully argued book presents nonpartisan political activism, judicial intervention into local government, and a pivotal moment in the fiscal history of the United States. It also reaches a surprising but utterly convincing conclusion: most tax revolters sought not a smaller government but a more efficient and progressive one.”-Daniel R. Ernst, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal History at Georgetown University Law Center, and author of Tocqueville’s Nightmare: The Administrative State Emerges in America, 1900–1940 "Upham-Bornstein is refreshingly evenhanded, and she avoids taking cheap shots or making simplistic generalizations. Her fair-mindedness deserves acknowledgement.... Most of Upham-Bornstein's analytical points are sensible. She makes a convincing case that New Deal subsidies dampened the motivation for tax resistance, either legal or illegal, and she poses intriguing questions about the extent to which African-American poll tax resistance counts as a form of tax revolt.... Backed by meticulous research and thoughtful analysis, 'Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender' should be a model for future studies of the oft-neglected story of American tax revolts."-Reason "Upham-Bornstein’s book sheds much-needed light on the history of America’s antitax movements"-Tax Notes"[A]n entertaining journey of tax collection and tax resistance.... There is something of a cast of characters, many of whom recur throughout the chapters as their roles in advocating for or responding to the various forms of tax resistance are discussed, and they can be full of personality. It is refreshing to see people who enter the political arena actually put up a fight, rather than keeping as low a profile as possible."-History: Review of New Books