In his paper, "The Study of Administration," Woodrow Wilson offered his reassurances that the professionalization of bureaucracy in America would not result in a "domineering, illiberal officialism." Free Americans, Wilson argued, had nothing to fear from borrowing bits of Prussia's systems of administration. He forecast the separation of the science of administration from the vagaries of politics, obsessed with the idea that a relative handful of wise reformers must save the "unphilosophical bulk of mankind" from themselves. In his book Illiberal Reformers, economist Thomas Leonard examines the Progressive Era drive to dispassionately apply science to politics and the often baleful consequences thereof. Leonard's study perfectly captures the Progressive impulse, a misguided, authoritarian appeal to the idea of expertise that bewitched Republicans and Democrats alike. Illiberal Reformers shows that the liberal-conservative paradigm we know today simply cannot explain the Progressivism of the early 20th century.