Dan Bouk researches the history of bureaucracies, quantification, and other modern things shrouded in cloaks of boringness. He studied computational mathematics as an undergraduate, before earning a PhD in history from Princeton University. His first book, How Our Days Became Numbered, explored the life insurance industry's methods for quantifying people, discriminating by race, and thinking statistically. He teaches history at Colgate University.
"Solid storytelling chops and a friendly tone help Bouk convince
readers who might question just how interesting a book about the
census can be. . . . Bouk uncovers the great paradox about the
decennial count: that it is an impossibly large and messy task, but
also an awe-inspiring achievement . . . He wants us to believe that
achieving a better census is possible, and to care whether it
improves. Democracy's Data makes the case." --Karen Sandstrom, The
Washington Post "A tour de force of archival research that reads
like a detective story, Democracy's Data reveals an entire secret
history behind one of the most underappreciated institutions of
modern civic life: the census. Following Dan Bouk through this
riveting exploration of what it means to count and be counted has
forever changed my understanding of the relationship between
information and a democratic society."
--Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map and Extra Life "The U.S.
Census is one of the most important yet least understood parts of
American democracy and Dan Bouk masterfully tells this story
through rich characters, eye-popping data, and deep historical
analysis. A must-read for students of history and politics."
--Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for
Voting Rights in America "Dan Bouk's Democracy's Data is a
revelation of the political and cultural forces that led to the
1940 census, and of the philosophical questions that underlie all
attempts to classify people. What do we measure? And who has the
power to decide? Bouk tells us what is at stake: a battle for the
very definition of personhood."
--Ellen Ullman, author of Close to the Machine "In 1787, the
framers of the Constitution decided that the new federal government
would count the population every ten years and use the results to
apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Electoral
College. 'We, the people, ' the constitution asserts in its
preamble, are the foundation of the American state. One hundred and
fifty years and sixteen censuses later, the 1940 census continued
to fulfill that mandate. But it turned out that the census did so
much more. Dan Bouk has written an extraordinary book revealing
just how prescient the framers were."
--Margo Anderson, author of The American Census: A Social History
"With a gift for stories and an abundance of acutely probing
questions, Dan Bouk shows how democracy's data was produced. The
politics of numbers has rarely been told so grippingly."
--Daniel T. Rodgers, author of Age of Fracture "Who knew stories
about government and statistics could be so engrossing? Through
captivating storytelling, Dan Bouk makes an esoteric infrastructure
utterly enthralling. Democracy's Data takes you on an intimate
journey, peeling back layers to help you see what lies behind the
numbers."
--danah boyd, author of It's Complicated and ethnographer of the
2020 U.S census "A gifted storyteller, Dan Bouk reveals the
political drama rumbling beneath a single census question and
illuminates the stakes erupting from a solitary statistic. It turns
out before there was Big Data there was old-fashioned big data, no
less political and consequential eighty years ago than it is today.
The humanity behind the numbers has always mattered, but
Democracy's Data transformed my black-and-white understanding into
Technicolor! All who care about the plight of our democracy owe it
to themselves to read this essential book."
--Ruha Benjamin, author of Race after Technology "Page by page,
Bouk polishes the seemingly dull census into a scintillating thing,
gleaming with stories and sparkling with insight. Democracy's Data
is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how data defines our
democracy and our lives."
--Jer Thorp, author of Living in Data
"Bouk shines a bright light on the power of the data to be used as
a tool to promote or silence the voices of certain demographics . .
. A page-turning examination of why we need to understand the
census and its wide-ranging effects."
--Kirkus
"Fascinating . . . Genealogists, history lovers, and anyone
interested in how government works will find this a fun and
revealing history of how politics, racism, and bias affect the
census."
--Booklist
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