Stapleford (Univ. of Norte Dame) treats a particularly timely topic, given that "data driven" decision making has become best practice in many fields. In a reworking of his 2003 Harvard University PhD thesis, he has produced a work accessible to a broad readership that offers a "focused lens," trained on "state-created, quantitative knowledge about the cost-of-living" (CPI), a statistic that has occupied a key role in US policy making in the US since its creation after WW I. The book is organized in three parts. The first deals with the establishment of statistics for labor-management purposes in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It is followed by a section on the politics of statistics in the New Deal era and a third section on the transformation of data gathering in the age of the "welfare" state. The epilogue, "Governance and Economic Statistics," sums up the volume. This book is a worthwhile text for all students of politics and economics at any level. Given the dizzying array of statistics that are published and referenced every day, questions about their validity warrant due consideration. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers; all levels of undergraduate and graduate students; researchers and professionals.
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