Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present.

Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present. Millennial Edition. Vol. 1, Part A: Population; Vol. 2, Part B: Work and Welfare; Vol. 3, Part C: Economic Structure and Performance; Vol. 4, Part D: Economic Sectors; Vol. 5, Part E: Governance and International Relations. Edited by Susan B. Carter and others. (New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xxviii, 778, 30, ISBN 0-521-58496-5; xiv, 934, 30, ISBN 0-521-58540-6; xiv, 832, 30, ISBN 0-521-81790-0; xiv, 1124, 30, ISBN 0-521-85389-3; xiv, 826, 30, ISBN 0-521-85390-7. Set of five volumes, $990.00, ISBN 0-521-81791-9.)

Most historians of the United States, whatever their precise field or topic of competence, have had recourse to a reference book entitled Historical Statistics of the United States, three previous editions of which were published in 1949, 1960, and 1975 respectively by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. These volumes, as all users know, contained data series on a wide variety of topics--population, agricultural production, manufacturing, etc. The data series had neither a consistent beginning date nor a uniform ending date because of the inconsistent availability of data, and the last edition carried some series up to 1970. Still, these volumes proved themselves indispensable. Now Cambridge University Press has published a fourth edition of the Historical Statistics, marketed as the Millennial Edition, in five hefty volumes (weighing twenty-nine pounds) containing a total of approximately 4,500 pages, 37,339 time series, and 70 essays. By any reckoning this is a monumental reference source, its usefulness matched by the range of information presented.

Each volume has the same format: a summary of the contents of all five volumes followed by a detailed table of contents for the volume in hand. Then follows a one-page preface, an acknowledgments page, a listing of the contributors to the volume, a listing of the institutional support for the new edition, a listing of the research assistants, a listing of the consultants involved, and finally a four-page guide to the books themselves. The thirty-page cumulative index is also printed in each volume. Each of the five volumes covers one or more general topics (Volume 1 is devoted to population; Volume 2 to work and welfare; Volume 3 to economic structure and performance; Volume 4 to economic sectors; and Volume 5 to governance and international relations). Under these broad rubrics the volumes are further subdivided. For example, Volume 1 has chapters devoted to population characteristics, vital statistics, internal migration, international migration, family and household composition, cohorts, and American Indians. There is a separate general editor for each of the chapters, and each chapter begins with an interpretative essay of five to twelve pages in length. Since these are large format books with double columns, these essays are quite substantial contributions themselves. Following the essays are the data sets, impressive for the variety of topics covered and the total amount of information relayed. Again the beginning and closing dates vary, but some go up through 1998. It is hard to convey the sweep of data: one is challenged to think of a topic susceptible to numerical analysis that is not represented, from celery production over time to the number of hospital personnel to sealskin harvesting and whale processing on the Pribilof Islands and various Pacific Coast stations.

On every imaginable important topic--population; corn and cotton production; port tonnage; income inequality; educational attainment (by gender and race over time) steel production; railroad passengers, freight, and income; governmental tax revenue and expenditures; crime measured in every conceivable way; information for the colonial period; a special section containing information on the Confederacy--there are charts of data. The sheer scope of this set engenders admiration for its compilers, not only those who toiled to produce it but also those untold thousands over the centuries who compiled the information that is now displayed in the thousands of tables of these five volumes. Every college and university will be obliged to purchase this set. The five volumes collectively cost $990, and the paper volumes can be bundled with an online version, the price of which is based upon the size of the population served (for public libraries) or the enrollment (for college and university libraries). The precise cost for the five paper volumes bundled with the electronic version may be obtained by contacting [e-mail]. Every scholar will want to talk to his or her librarian about acquiring this essential reference set as soon as possible.