Grose, Christian. Congress in Black and White: Race and Representation in Washington and at Home (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), $24.99, 242 pp. ISBN: 978-0-521-17701-6 (paper).

Congress in Black and White: Race and Representation in Washington and at Home is a contemporary multimethod analysis about the effects of race on the nature of congressional representation. Grose addresses a major scholarly debate regarding racial representation in the United States Congress by examining the nexus between descriptive and substantive representation. He argues that African American legislators are the most optimal sources of substantive representation of Black constituency interests. Grose provides new evidence which suggests that substantive representation of Black interests vary according to the type of legislative behavior and activity. In both aggregate and individual level analyses, the author empirically examines whether or not substantive representation is maximized through floor voting on civil rights policy, constituency service, or project delivery. He contends that the most important means of substantive representation for Black constituents occur as a result of distributive public policymaking, as opposed to legislators’ roll call voting behavior.