The Value of a Dollar: Prices and Incomes in the United States, 1860-1999

by Scott Derks

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1891482491
• ISBN13: 9781891482496
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Universal Reference Publications (CT)
• Length: 493 Pages
• Weight: 3.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 8.9" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

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!

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!