This book is generally about public administration and particularly about new public administration, a product of the turbulent late 1960s and the 1970s.

H. George Frederickson is a generalist in the field of public administration with particular interests in public administration ethics, theories of public administration, systems of multi-level governance, and American local government. In 1987, he joined the faculty of the Department of Public Administration as the Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas. Prior to that, he served for over 10 years as the President of Eastern Washington University at Cheney and Spokane, Washington. Earlier, he taught at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, Indiana University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Missouri. In 2003-2004 he served as the John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government at the University of Oxford, and as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.