False Alarm: Why the Greatest Threat to Social Security and Medicare is the Campaign to “Save” Them. By Joseph White. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 320p. $42.50

Few public policy issues have drawn more popular attention, generated more media commentary, or produced more books than the national debate over the dark fate of Social Security and Medicare. In a new book, noted policy scholar Joseph White argues that the “entitlement crisis” and the future insolvency projected by so many experts, politicians, and opinion makers are myths that badly need exploding. White insists that although we should be very concerned about the viability of each of these two essential government programs, we should not be carried away by the hysteria amplified by radical reformers and saviors of every political coloration. Rather, we should attempt to formulate a clear-eyed analysis of the purposes and constraints of social insurance that will produce genuine programmatic solutions that do not radically weaken the nation's social safety net.