What kind of revolution was the Cliometrics Revolution? Was it like the Industrial Revolution—a fundamental change of course with profound implications? Or was it, perhaps, more like the miniskirt—a passing fad, which quickened everyone's pulse but had little real impact? Was the Cliometrics Revolution really even a revolution? Did it actually mark a sharp break from the past?

This volume answers these questions (and many, many more) by providing insiders’ view points. The volume opens with a knowledgeable, well-researched overview of the economic history profession's recent history and cliometrics’ place in it, but the real contribution is to bring together 25 interviews—almost all of which are republished from the Newsletter of the Cliometric Society, mainly dating from the 1990s. The subjects, born between 1912 and 1937, are truly the preeminent economic historians of their generation—Moses Abramovitz, M. C. Urquhart, Anna J. Schwartz, Walt W. Rostow, Stanley Lebergott, H. J. Habakkuk, Phyllis Deane, W. A. Cole, R. C. O. Matthews, William N. Parker, Douglass C. North, Lance E. Davis, Jonathan R. T. Hughes, Nathan Rosenberg, R. M. Hartwell, Eric Jones, Charles H. Feinstein, Richard A. Easterlin, Robert E. Gallman, Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, John R. Meyer, Albert Fishlow, Paul A. David, and Peter Temin.

Max Hartwell suggests that cliometrics, aka the New Economic History, was “a bit like a tidal wave, which stirred up a lot, but” didn't transform “much of the landscape in its wake” (p. 272). A couple other interviewees offer similar sentiments. The bulk of the opinion, however, concludes that cliometrics was a major achievement. Richard Easterlin, for example, argues that “a vast void has been filled, increasing our knowledge of the facts of economic growth as well as our ability to test hypotheses and generalizations” (p. 317). Douglass North's praise is more tempered: “we were more successful at demolishing existing explanations than in constructing new ones” (p. 197)—and Clio, too often, has grappled with small ideas.

The most compelling repeated theme is nostalgia for the “excitement” and even “exhilaration” of the glory days of the late 1950s and the 1960s when cliometrics took economic history by storm. At mid-century, as John Meyer explains it, economics was regarded as a stool with three equally important legs—theory, statistics, and history. Because cliometrics wedded the three together for the first time, the profession eagerly embraced it. The early cliometricians weren't certain that anyone would pay attention and were surprised at the huge demand for their product—a demand that crucially manifested itself in the job market. The “young and cocky” early practitioners enjoyed a wonderful esprit de corps and were fervent evangelists as they took on the rest of world and spread their “transformative” new approach. They easily converted economists who “egged” them on, but met stiff resistance from some historians.

What happened next? Some of these workaholics moved on to new interests, but most appear to have kept their fire for decades, as their work matured—serious work which they engagingly discuss throughout the interviews. My dissertation advisors in the mid-1980s were second-generation cliometricians and imparted their zeal to their students. I aim to do the same in my classroom. However, as many of the interviews lament, the demand for cliometrics among economists has clearly waned and the profession does not provide sufficient reward to those who devote their energies to accurate measurement.

Only a few of the interviews fall flat. Most are replete with interesting biographical details. We learn, for instance, that Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's A Monetary of History of the United States—which an EH.Net panel selected as one of the dozen most influential economic history publications of the twentieth century—also served as Schwartz's doctoral dissertation; that Jon Hughes married secretly—because Rhodes scholars weren't allowed to marry—and that Nate Rosenberg was his best man; and that in 1941 at the age of 22, Bill Parker oversaw the air conditioning industry at the Office of Production Management—and was treated “with great deference” by “terribly worried” VP's from Carrier and Frigidaire. Unfortunately, some of the interviews seem to have consciously avoided the most interesting nonacademic experiences of the interviewees—such as Robert Fogel's life as a Communist Party organizer or Walt Rostow's experiences as a presidential advisor during the Vietnam War.

If we are lucky, in another decade or two someone will be asked to review this book's successor, which will bring together the reminiscences, ruminations, and insights of the next generation of cliometricians.