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Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition. Ed. by Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006. 5 vols. $1,095. (ISBN 0-521-81791-9).
As its bicentennial gift to the nation, the U.S. Census Bureau published its third and final edition of the Historical Statistics of the United States in 1975. Although the two-volume set quickly became a staple of reference collections in libraries of all types, the bureau decided in 1990 that it would no longer publish it, precisely when most users expected work to commence on a new edition. Savvy reference and government information librarians know that many of the tables in Historical Statistics are updated in the bureau's annual Statistical Abstract of the United States; however, the convenience of having such a long run of statistical information in...