Anthropometric historians do not seek to tell us about the causes of stature trends (that is left to the biologists and physiologists), but to give us a ranking of which factors were most important at different times. This is no easy task, given that there are more than 30 or so interrelated factors that can have a direct or indirect influence on a given stature trend. Nowhere is the need for a ranking more pressing than in explanations of the antebellum puzzle, the period from 1820 to 1860 where stature was on the decline despite continued economic growth. If average income, which was growing consistently throughout the time period, is not the answer, what is? Some of the explanations include changes in diet, where food market integration led to declining diet quality. Others look to increasing income inequality in the mid nineteenth century as the most important factor. Still others see increasing population growth and urbanization, which allowed more and different types of diseases to spread more quickly as the most likely culprit. The ranking that stature scholars could provide would be important—it would tell us about both what factors were most important and about the tradeoffs made between material and nutritional well-being in the early stages of industrialization, and would also tell development economists how to minimize the short-run negatives that appear to go hand in hand with the long-run positives of economic development.

The reality is that there are no easy answers, and because the stature trends analyzed are very long time series, several factors could play a role. Timothy Cuff's book, however, makes a serious and significant advance in the area by using basic trade theory to generate testable hypotheses about the relationship between economic integration and nutritional well-being. The central idea is that, in the short run, rural and urban communities engaging in trade and using their comparative advantage would shift the nature of production in the rural areas away from subsistence and towards cash crops. In the short run, it would be better to be farther away from the economic integration. Those who were more self sufficient in the early years of industrialization would see less deterioration in average statures, as they would not have to heed the push into cash crops, which decreases diet diversification and has negative consequences for stature. He also seeks to confirm that the antebellum puzzle existed for his sample (Civil War recruits from Pennsylvania), and that there is geographic and socioeconomic variation in stature, but these facts have been so established in the literature (and in the pages of this JOURNAL in particular) that they are somewhat unnecessary goals.

Cuff begins his book with a brief introduction and a summary of the anthropometric enterprise. He is careful to point out what stature can and cannot tell us, and as such these chapters (particularly the second) make an excellent introduction to the field for the novice. The third chapter lays out the theoretical basis for the prediction that distance from economic centers would protect net nutritional well-being. If there is a shortcoming to the text it is in this chapter. Although Cuff does a fine job of laying out the basics of the theory, economists (myself included) will probably want a more sophisticated and analytical approach. Even a partial equilibrium model for relatively isolated rural households in which the short-run gains from trade are zero or even negative would be helpful. These potential gains would have to change over time, and so the model would need to incorporate some straightforward dynamics. In any case, the argument Cuff lays out is intuitively appealing, but a formal model would have given me more confidence that Cuff had thoroughly considered the ramifications of his approach. He could also use the model to justify the empirical analysis that dominates the text.

Cuff next establishes that antebellum Pennsylvania was indeed a collection of economies at different stages of development in the early nineteenth century. The case he makes is very strong. Pennsylvania ran the economic gamut—from large cities with little self-sufficient agriculture in the southeastern parts of the state to the subsistence farmers in the west. Cuff also makes use of the Allegheny mountains in the middle of the state as a natural barrier to trade in the early antebellum period. The fifth chapter, however, forms the heart of the analysis. In it, Cuff uses his large sample of Civil War recruits from Pennsylvania to establish that those coming from the least economically integrated areas showed relatively little deterioration in stature in the antebellum era. Those who had significant home production (a measure of their detachment from the market economy) were significantly taller than those who were not. The interesting feature of this finding is that it is separate from geography per se, and is seen even for households in the same geographic region.

There are, naturally, objections one could raise about this work. Cuff's sample does not extend deeply into the early antebellum period, for example, and he could have grouped his data at the county or regional level to give his economic variables more explanatory power. Overall, however, Cuff has produced a fine work that shows how careful economic reasoning, when combined with detailed empirical analysis can shed light on the relative importance of different factors. In this way, his book serves as a model for young anthropometric historians to follow as they seek to account for the stature trends that the senior generation of scholars uncovered.