Through an opening epigraph from Norman Maclean, Mar- garet Levi proposes a vivid analogy between the complexities of conscription and of fire: In both cases many causes intersect to produce particular events, yet the analyst's job is to tease truth from complexity. Seeking to clarify costly political consent in general, Levi astutely analyzes resistance to and compliance with calls to military service, a quintessen- tial case in which individuals face the choice of bearing large costs on behalf of benefits they will share little or not at all and to which their participation will make little difference. In the process, without ever quite saying so, she batters the postulate of universal self-interest that undergirds so much of rational choice argument in political science.