The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000 By Ben J. Wattenberg, Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks AEI Press; 300 pages; $20

Review excerpt:

The book is a series of two-page spreads, each representing a different trend in American demographics. But this is no coffee-table book; the diagrams and their explanations are stark, to-the-point and well-sourced. Most of the trends won't surprise the demographically literate. Tag lines seem to state the obvious: "Unemployment rates fluctuate with the business cycle and military manpower needs." Or "Control of the U.S. House of Representative and the U.S. Senate oscillated between the two major parties." Or "The health of children showed spectacular improvement."

Meredith Bagby is the author of "Rational Exuberance: How Generation X is, Creating a New American Economy" and "We've Got Issues: The Get Real, No, B.S. Guide to What Really Matters."

Theodore Caplow is the Commonwealth Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and the author of many books, inclduing American Social Trends (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991). Louis Hicks is an associate professor of sociology at St. Mary's College of Maryland and co-author of Systems of War and Peace (University Press of America, 1995). Ben J. Wattenberg is a senior fellow at AEI, a syndicated solumnist, moderator of the PBS series Think Tank, and author of many books, including Values Matter most (Free Press, 1995).