KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST INDIE BOOKS OF 2025
“In The Mismeasurement of America, Gene Ludwig and his team demonstrate that policymakers need to change the way we look at economic data to reflect the real experience of Americans in their daily lives.”
―HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
“In lucid, down-to-earth prose, Ludwig distills complex economic and statistical issues into easily digestible reasoning, illustrated with arresting examples of odd statistical assumptions that ignore kitchen-table realities. . . A hard-hitting indictment of the data underpinning federal economic policies.”
―KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)
“Grounded in thoughtful research, The Mismeasurement of America cuts through to the truth and shows us how to make economic opportunity and fair play real for all.”
―GLENN HUBBARD, Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia University, and former Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers
“[Ludwig] shows how outdated definitions have made it seem that economic mobility is available to all―but it isn’t. Highly recommended for all readers concerned about the health and vitality of the nation and its residents.”
―LIBRARY JOURNAL
“With his signature thoughtful, research-driven approach, Ludwig gets to the heart of the economic anxiety so many Americans experience and what policymakers across the political spectrum are missing. A must-read for those who care about a better future for America.”
―DEVAL PATRICK, investor, business executive, lawyer and former Governor of Massachusetts
“In The Mismeasurement of America, Ludwig, deploying a forensic team of economic statistic experts, unflinchingly dissects our most commonly quoted statistics, like inflation and earnings, revealing them to be deficient in reflecting most Americans’ economic experiences.”
―SARAH BLOOM RASKIN, former US Treasury Deputy Secretary
“In The Mismeasurement of America, Gene Ludwig describes how conventional measures of economic performance don’t reveal the true state of the economy for many Americans. Ludwig critiques the measures we use and proposes new ways to capture central forces like inflation, which can be much higher for Americans who are struggling than the headline numbers suggest.”
―ROBERT E. RUBIN, Cochair Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations, and former US Treasury Secretary
“A readable and impassioned plea to restore the American Dream.”
―ISABEL SAWHILL Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Brookings Institution
“In Gene Ludwig’s new book, he doesn’t blame the bureaucracy for politicizing economic data. He reveals the more banal but insidious truth: The conception, collection, and publication of much of our economic data is deeply flawed. Misleading data leads to misguided economic decision-making, undermining the residual trust between the elected and the electorate.”
―KEVIN WARSH former Governor of the Federal Reserve
“Ludwig’s book provides an important bridge between good data and bad vibes. As he shows, in an economy where inequality has been on the rise for decades, where millions are underemployed, where poor people’s inflation rises faster than that of the rich, averages increasingly fail to tell the full economic story.”
―WASHINGTON MONTHLY
Gene Ludwig, 27th Comptroller of the Currency, is a business and civic leader and expert on banking, regulation, risk management, and fiscal policy. In 2019, he founded the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), a nonprofit dedicated to improving the economic well-being of low- and middle-income Americans through research and education.
His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Politico, the Financial Times, and TIME. He holds a master’s degree from Oxford University and a JD from Yale University, where he was on the Yale Law Journal and chairman of Yale Legislative Services. He is the author of The Vanishing American Dream and The Mismeasurement of America.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
This book might seem, at first glance, somewhat arcane. After all, it is mostly an examination of economic statistics found in key US headlines. In fact, some might view such an exercise as not only arcane but also not worth their time. Why is scrutinizing oft-cited, government-headline statistics so important? Do they offer a reasonably accurate snapshot of America? Shockingly, this is not the case, particularly as these statistics portray the well-being of middle- and low-income Americans.
Importantly, then, this book addresses three core questions: First, what, if anything, is wrong with the picture of America painted by the prevailing figures? Second, what does a more accurate picture look like? And third, if the key government economic statistics do inaccurately portray lower- and middle-income Americans, how can they be changed or supplemented to better reflect reality?
Alternatively, if viewing the book and its subject matter through a narrow lens, some will wonder whether its insights have the potential to have any real impact. Why should anyone put in the effort to do anything to correct rather academic misperceptions, however widespread? Is improving the focus of our economic measurements worth the effort? All fair questions.
In order to answer them, you need to understand a bit about my background. I was born in York, Pennsylvania, a small farming and industrial city at the edge of the quaint and beautiful Amish country, but I’ve worked most of my career in Washington, as a lawyer, as an economic policymaker, as perhaps most importantly, as a financial regulator, serving for several years as Comptroller of the Currency. Over the last decade or more, when I traveled back home to York, I noticed something of growing concern: Economic circumstances on the ground in Pennsylvania were increasingly askew from the narrative my peers in policymaking circles in Washington presumed to be true. Things in York weren’t booming, as you might have presumed listening to roundtable discussions in the nation’s capital. And I began to ask why that was.
After several years of making these observations, I formed a hypothesis: The economic statistics that form the basis of economic reality are giving policymakers inaccurate renderings of reality.
At first, that was just a notion—a hunch that I couldn’t yet prove to be true. But I was determined to see my intuition through, and so I hired a crack team of young scholars and economists to work at what we termed the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, or LISEP. Once these researchers were on board, I asked them to begin what became a forensic analysis with a crucial goal: to understand the roots of the chasm separating perception and reality. The pages that follow are a report arising from what we uncovered.
My hope is that after reading this book, you will come to conclusions mirroring my own and share my conviction about the critical importance of accurate government statistics, especially when it comes to understanding the economic reality for lower- and middle-income Americans, a group that comprises more than half of our fellow Americans.
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