Lucas Powe's book, The Supreme Court and the American Elite, is a worthy successor to McCloskey as the best one-volume history of the Supreme Court. Powe deftly builds on the recent literature to convey a concise narrative of the development of American constitutional law that shows how the U.S. Supreme Court operates within the mainstream of American politics in alliance with the political coalitions that occupy the elected branches to implement a common vision of the American constitutional project.