Customer Reviews

Pursuing Happiness

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Stanley Lebergott has earned a reputation as one of America's foremost economic historian. He is a first-rate economist; he writes beautifully and cleverly; he is learned; and his subjects are germane.

PURSUING HAPPINESS is a terrific book. Lebergott reviews the history of consumption opportunities under capitalism. Like Julian Simon, and Mike Cox & Rick Alm, he finds that the material well-being of ordinary Americans has skyrocketed during the 20th century. To compare American living standards at the close of the 20th century to those at the beginning of the 20th century is to discover an explosion of wealth so vast that we who today enjoy this astonishing wealth can scarcely imagine what life was like for our ancestors of just 100 years ago.

Today, we have many more things -- and much more time (both because we live longer and because we have more leisure), improved health, greater learning, and a richer menu of entertainments. Lebergott shows also that capitalism has been especially good for the working classes and for women. For example, he documents the extraordinarily burdensome and time-consuming tasks that nearly all women 100 years ago did routinely to keep their households running. Today, almost all such tasks are farmed out or mechanized. (In one of his many brilliant lines, Lebergott notes that "By the 1980s, only a handful of hippies expected their womenfolk to haul water from the brook or well.")

No one who comments upon the course of the American economy should be without this book.

Actually had Stan the Man as a professor at Wesleyan - frankly a bit on the dry side - but always full of fascinating facts and information. And he was always willing to chide the "life was better 100 years ago" nonsense.

As a writer and economist he is GREAT and this book is so clear and full of smart common sense thinking it is scary to think that for a lot of people it is full of revelations that challenge the group think. If you like economics and history you can't miss this.

This is a remarkable, concise, easy to read and to the point overview of the dramatic improvement in the lifestyle of Americans over the 20th Century. If I were to recommend just one book on the subject this would be it.

The book is divided into two parts: 1)Economic Well Being, dealing with various consumer topics such as the effect of consumption inequality, advertising, choices consumers make, the improvement in buying power for an hour's work and the decline in housework hours leading to the entry of women into the labor force. 2) Major Trends deals with various consumer sectors such as food, housing, clothing, transportation, health care, etc. and adds seldom covered subjects like the diffusion of public water supply and the decline in deaths from various infectious diseases.

There are ample tables of data and numerous references.

This is one economics book that was actually fun to read.