This Is Who We Were

Abstract

This Is Who We Were is a fourteen-volume series documenting what life was like throughout American history. The first volume, This Is Who We Were: A Companion to the 1940 Census was published in 2012, and covers life in the 1930s, leading up to the 1940 Census. The most recent volume, This Is Who We Were: In the 2010s, was published in 2020. Each volume follows a similar outline: personal profiles; historical snapshots; economy of the time; “All Around Us—What We Saw, Wrote, Read & Listened To”; and Census summary and comparison data. After the first volume, which was essentially “in the 1930s,” the series takes on primarily a decade-by-decade format, with subsequent volumes covering 1880-1889, the 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. The two remaining volumes broke from the single decade format, with one covering the 1900s and the other Colonial America (1492–1775).