The second volume of The Collected Works of William Howard Taft is dedicated to the speeches and writings that displayed his thinking in the autumn of 1908 and the following winter.

At this time he was campaigning for the presidency against the well-known William Jennings Bryan, and in Taft’s writings is evidence of the contrast in style between Taft and Bryan and between Taft and his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt. as well. Although uncomfortable with campaigning, he thoughtfully addresses the concerns of the day that framed the election, including race, the Philippines, and socialism.

Political Issues and Outlooks also contains speeches made after the election and leading up to his inauguration as the twenty-seventh president of the United States. Introduced by a commentary from the general series editor Professor David H. Burton, the second volume of The Collected Works of William Howard Taft is a revealing look at the machinations of United States politics at the beginning of the twentieth century and a glimpse into the mind of one of the century’s most influential political architects.

Through interviews conducted with nonprofit agency managers in the New York City metropolitan area, Susan Bernstein vividly describes their experiences with "contracting out," the principal way that the "reluctant" American welfare state has of providing public services through the private sector. The agency administrators look upon this as a nightmarish game and their stories illuminate how welfare state mechanisms work in practice as well as the tangled nature of bureaucracies Bernstein illustrates and analyzes these administrators’ strategies for managing the administrative, ethical, and political issues of contracted services. Managing Contracted Services is one of the first books to examine how administrators manage contracted services in a bureaucratic and political environment.