Publishers Weekly
07/18/2022
Historian Bouk (How Our Days Became Numbered) delivers a painstaking and penetrating analysis of the 1940 census. Uncovering “stories in the data,” Bouk parses the bureaucratic processes behind the creation and execution of the census, which contained 30 questions—including, for the first time ever, a column for marking the respondent’s wage income—asked by roughly 120,000 enumerators about 131 million U.S. residents. He also delves into the streamlining of responses to conform to highly specific categories of population, race, and household organization, and makes incisive connections between this mass-produced government questionnaire and the decades-long legacy of New Deal social programs, the conduct of the U.S. before and after its entry into WWII, and how the census (“the factory of American facts”) has evolved through the present-day. On a darker note, Bouk contends that the 1940 census upheld white supremacy by undercounting Black residents in cities and classifying Mexican Americans as “white,” and explains how it contributed to the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Combining lucid statistical analysis and empathetic profiles of enumerators and respondents, this is a rewarding deep dive into how the census works. Agent: Jane von Mehren, Aevitas Creative. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
"Solid storytelling chops and a friendly tone help Bouk convince readers who might question just how interesting a book about the census can be. . . . Bouk uncovers the great paradox about the decennial count: that it is an impossibly large and messy task, but also an awe-inspiring achievement . . . He wants us to believe that achieving a better census is possible, and to care whether it improves. Democracy’s Data makes the case." —Karen Sandstrom, The Washington Post
"A tour de force of archival research that reads like a detective story, Democracy's Data reveals an entire secret history behind one of the most underappreciated institutions of modern civic life: the census. Following Dan Bouk through this riveting exploration of what it means to count and be counted has forever changed my understanding of the relationship between information and a democratic society."
—Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map and Extra Life
"The U.S. Census is one of the most important yet least understood parts of American democracy and Dan Bouk masterfully tells this story through rich characters, eye-popping data, and deep historical analysis. A must-read for students of history and politics."
—Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America
“Dan Bouk’s Democracy’s Data is a revelation of the political and cultural forces that led to the 1940 census, and of the philosophical questions that underlie all attempts to classify people. What do we measure? And who has the power to decide? Bouk tells us what is at stake: a battle for the very definition of personhood.”
—Ellen Ullman, author of Close to the Machine
“In 1787, the framers of the Constitution decided that the new federal government would count the population every ten years and use the results to apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Electoral College. ‘We, the people,’ the constitution asserts in its preamble, are the foundation of the American state. One hundred and fifty years and sixteen censuses later, the 1940 census continued to fulfill that mandate. But it turned out that the census did so much more. Dan Bouk has written an extraordinary book revealing just how prescient the framers were.”
—Margo Anderson, author of The American Census: A Social History
“With a gift for stories and an abundance of acutely probing questions, Dan Bouk shows how democracy’s data was produced. The politics of numbers has rarely been told so grippingly.”
—Daniel T. Rodgers, author of Age of Fracture
“Who knew stories about government and statistics could be so engrossing? Through captivating storytelling, Dan Bouk makes an esoteric infrastructure utterly enthralling. Democracy’s Data takes you on an intimate journey, peeling back layers to help you see what lies behind the numbers.”
—danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated and ethnographer of the 2020 U.S census
“A gifted storyteller, Dan Bouk reveals the political drama rumbling beneath a single census question and illuminates the stakes erupting from a solitary statistic. It turns out before there was Big Data there was old-fashioned big data, no less political and consequential eighty years ago than it is today. The humanity behind the numbers has always mattered, but Democracy’s Data transformed my black-and-white understanding into Technicolor! All who care about the plight of our democracy owe it to themselves to read this essential book.”
—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race after Technology
"Page by page, Bouk polishes the seemingly dull census into a scintillating thing, gleaming with stories and sparkling with insight. Democracy's Data is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how data defines our democracy and our lives."
—Jer Thorp, author of Living in Data
“Bouk shines a bright light on the power of the data to be used as a tool to promote or silence the voices of certain demographics . . . A page-turning examination of why we need to understand the census and its wide-ranging effects.”
—Kirkus
"Fascinating . . . Genealogists, history lovers, and anyone interested in how government works will find this a fun and revealing history of how politics, racism, and bias affect the census.”
—Booklist
Kirkus Reviews
2022-05-25
A deep dive into the 1940 U.S. census: how it was created, completed, deployed, and even weaponized and what it can teach us about American democracy.
“I hope that this book will help people hear data speak in new ways,” writes Bouk, a professor of history at Colgate. “I hope readers will develop an admiration for data’s depths, for the ways that sweat and blood suffuse a data set. Some people fall in love with the appearance of data as a thing more or less certain, simple, and precise. I think there is more beauty and also more truth in acknowledging and even appreciating the roots of data in the uncertain, complicated, and often hazy spaces of life.” The author provides a meticulous examination of the mechanics of the census, a complex topic that includes the design of the questions, training of the enumerators, public promotion across the country, and how it affects political representation and opposition. Bouk’s study of the 1940 census shows how data can be manipulated, leading to such lamentable actions as the internment of Japanese Americans during and after World War II. Using photographed examples, including the census data on a variety of significant historical figures, Bouk shines a bright light on the power of the data to be used as a tool to promote or silence the voices of certain demographics. Throughout the text, the author clearly demonstrates the importance of understanding the context of census development: what it can tell us about what was important at the time a particular census was executed as well as the often far-reaching effects on all elements of society. As Bouk argues convincingly, “looking squarely at complicated data-making processes is becoming an essential activity for all those who wish to have a say in shaping our world, from activists to policy makers, and for every person striving to remain an informed citizen.”
A page-turning examination of why we need to understand the census and its wide-ranging effects.
