MixedThe Wall Street Journal... an excellent primer on the history of census-taking, achieving the rare combination of offering appealing writing for nonexperts and high-quality research for specialists. From ancient Confucian ideas about governance to the contested identities of the West Bank inhabitants, Mr. Whitby traces a fascinating story of why and how governments have counted their people. But perhaps the most remarkable parts of his book are its two chapters on population registries and administration records. Far from being a staid history of accountancy, the story covers the French resistance, precision airstrikes and Kristallnacht ... Mr. Whitby provides a vivid and informative account of modern census-taking, but his book contains a perplexing narrative strand: the laughable view that Christian religious ideas meaningfully prevented the rise of modern censuses ... Worse than being wrong about the Bible, Mr. Whitby’s account of religion is also wrong about censuses. His central argument, that Christianity retarded the advent of census-taking, is false ... There is an interesting story to tell about religion and censuses, but it isn’t one that features religious people as superstitious villains.
Jonathan A Rodden
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalFilling his book with maps and charts, the author excels in analyzing the historical roots of urban political movements. In perhaps the most fascinating section, Mr. Rodden presents maps of 19th-century railroad nodes and shows that the past presence of those steam-age crossings strongly correlates with Democratic Party vote shares today ... The exact mechanics that Mr. Rodden proposes for this particular phenomenon are a bit vague ... With luck, books like Why Cities Lose might provoke both parties to recognize that our electoral system has always rewarded politicians that strive to build a politically diverse coalition.
Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalTheir book is a vital warning to the world that the risks associated with population have been catastrophically misread: Governments and activists have spent decades fighting the specter of overpopulation, but now face the looming demographic calamity of global population collapse ... the authors combine a mastery of social-science research with enough journalistic flair to convince fair-minded readers of a simple fact: Fertility is falling faster than most experts can readily explain, driven by persistent forces ... Empty Planet succeeds as a long-overdue skewering of population-explosion fearmongers. But the book seems more confused about what should be done ... Population decline is a new problem, and not well understood: Western societies have not faced its effects since the bubonic plague. Messrs. Bricker and Ibbitson can perhaps be forgiven, then, for their inconsistency on what to do about low fertility. They have done crucial work to start a conversation. Let’s hope it goes somewhere before it’s too late.
