Product Description

A century and a half of America's consumer economy in one easy-to-use volume. This second edition of the highly successful Value of a Dollar records the actual prices of thousands of items that consumers purchased from the Civil War to the present, along with facts about investment options and income opportunities. The first edition, published by Gale Research in 1993, covered the period from 1860 to 1989. This second edition has been completely redesigned and revised and now contains two new chapters, 1990-1994 and 1995-1999. Each 5-year chapter includes a Historical Snapshot, Consumer Expenditures, Investments, Selected Income, Income/Standard Jobs, Food Basket, Standard Prices and Miscellany. This interesting and useful publication will be widely used in any reference collection.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #700349 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 600 pages

From Booklist
When politician Thomas R. Marshall said in 1920 that "what this country needs is a really good 5-cent cigar," cigars typically cost twice that much. When Herbert Hoover made the statement often paraphrased as "a chicken in every pot" in 1928, chicken cost around 38 cents per pound. How do we know? Because we looked it up in this new edition (the first was published by Gale in 1994) of a fascinating survey of American wages and prices over past 139 years.

Review
"Business historians, reporters, writers and students will find this source...very helpful for historical research. Large public and academic libraries will want to purchase it." -- ARBA

Customer Reviews

GREAT BOOK
IT IS A GREAT BOOK. I USED IT FOR MY SCHOOL, ON A HISTORY PROJECT I FOUND EVERY THING I NEEDED IN FROM THE YEARS OF1955-1989-1999 I RECOMEND IT TO ALL PEOPLE!

An Invaluable Research Tool!
This book is a highly detailed and simply invaluable research tool for writers, historians, teachers, etc. Some books give you a quick sampling -- ie, bread cost so much, milk cost so much, a car cost so much -- without giving you any more specifics or backing up their stated facts with sources. But THE VALUE OF A DOLLAR digs deeper, giving you comparisons (high end cars, low end cars), plus charts of how much people in various professions made (while Elvis made ten million in one year in the '50's, a secretary with typing and shorthand typically earned around $85 a week). You can check out the grocery section to see how fruits, vegetables, and all household staples stacked up against a person's basic salary and how much of their income went for basic necessities -- or look at the cost of entertainments (movies, theater tickets, sporting events, games) in any particular era. Simply fascinating reading, carefully documented (columns typically list which publications the prices or salaries came from). If you're a writer of any kind of history or historian of any kind, don't be without it!