Wealth, Health, and Democracy tries to make deeper sense of the relationship between mortality outcomes and political regimes in the developing world. McGuires' thick, comparative inquiry updates the basic "wealth is health" story, carefully selecting eight countries to push an interesting idea: long-term democracies that extend basic health services to the poor are the most successful at impacting infant mortality outcomes. Enticing and pragmatic, McGuires' work is a guide map to why and how particular regimes succeeded in reducing infant mortality, and why others did not--not a theoretically tight study that fully tames the data. This volume succeeds in pushing the idea that regimes matter, as much as economic outcomes, in impacting infant mortality. A thoughtful synthesis most useful for health policy and area study scholars.Much toner has been spilled on cross-sectional studies exploring the relationship between various economic indicators and mortality outcomes. McGuire, focusing on infant mortality, contends that the extension of basic (and relatively cheap) social services to the most vulnerable has had the most profound impact on infant mortality. Interestingly, he argues for the primacy of family planning policy, water sanitation, basic health care services, and human capital in reducing the mortality experiences of nations. Moreover, while democracy matters for improving infant mortality, he predicates that "long-term" experiences with democracy are most pivotal. While some dictatorships have had surprising impacts on mortality experiences, like Pinochet's Chile, McGuire contends that democratic experiences that preceded autocratic rule often formed an impetus, or "expectation," for later policy.Each chapter contains an in-depth overview of the health care policies pursued by various political regimes, tying them to reductions--often surprising ones-- in mortality rates. McGuire is adept at synthesizing secondary research from scholars and development institutions, contextualizing them with his theory. His "first stage," connecting the extension of basic health policy to political dynamics is most interesting, and is quite convincing across his sample of countries. This volume is valuable in its mapping of various regimes and political turmoil to their actual healthcare policy.However, McGuire's analysis often takes the second stage, relating policy to actual shifts in infant mortality, for granted. He is particularly constrained in looking at single, annual infant mortality time series, which makes connecting health policy choices to actual reductions in infant mortality hard. With regime changes, and the sweeping policy initiatives that come with them, empirical policy evaluation researchers may not be convinced as to the mechanisms connecting policy choice and infant mortality. While this study need not be a "well identified" empirical study of health policy, connecting policy to outcomes may be anecdotal for some--particularly health economists.McGuire succeeds in presenting an extensive, sweeping picture of the health policy experiences of developing Latin American and Asian countries, placing them in striking political contexts. Each chapter can be a self-contained public health literature review on each country, and presents a bibliographic resource to policy scholars. Most importantly, in fleshing out his comparative political story, McGuire succeeds in showing the important interrelationship between basic types of social services and politics in reducing infant mortality. Rather than being an analytical, causal story, Wealth, Health, and Democracy is much more of a bird's eye view of the political economy of health policy in the developing world. Fit for public health and policy scholars.