Description: Revised edition of the author's The American census, c1988.
Review Quotes: "The census has a surprisingly lively history, exceptionally well told here . . ., with ramifications extending to our own day."--Washington Post Book World (on the first edition)
"A clear and intriguing examination of the many-faceted history of the American census. . . . As a history of the census, this study is a delight. It is thoroughly researched and richly detailed. Anderson is to be commended for covering such an expansive chronology with such skill. . . . Anderson has woven together not only social history but also intellecutal, institutional, political, and military history into a thoroughly readable book that examines not only changes in the census but also the remarkable changes that have taken place in the US."--Choice "Any scholar who uses the census, and this includes virtually all Americanists, will find Professor Anderson's lucid and carefully researched account of its taking indispensable. . . . This is a signally useful and important book."-- John F. McClymer, The Historian "[A] lucid and quietly revealing account. . . . She shows plainly how our census has played a pervasive triple role: as a tool for the apportionment of power, as a rational baseline measure for much of American social science and as a theater of policy debate. For generation after generation those fateful census categories have formed the framework of social issues."--Scientific American