Writing about politics and elections can be daunting. Things move fast and much can change quickly. Karen Sebold has written a book that arrives exactly on time. As of this writing, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is currently moribund, with only two of six commissioners in place and a third claiming to have been illegally fired by President Donald Trump. That the FEC could end up in crisis (or short on commissioners) is not unexpected, as Sebold rightly knows. Her book takes a longer historical look at the Commission, providing the needed context for today's dysfunction. The seeds were planted decades ago, and Sebold leverages a wide range of data and analysis to examine the capacity of the FEC to meet the expectations initially placed on it.

The FEC has many important functions in its remit, including interpretation of the law, enforcement of infractions, and data access for citizens. It must consider a lot, and there is endless scrutiny placed on the Commission for doing too much of one thing and not enough of another. It is common for students of federal campaign finance to lament the FEC as toothless, misguided, captured by Congress, or hopelessly deadlocked. Many have written about the FEC, much of it in law reviews. But few have devoted book-length social scientific treatments to the Commission. Sebold's work is long overdue, as the mandate