Douma applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York: A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700–1827, and reported the following:
Page 99 of my book is part of a description about how I converted colonial New York pounds into U.S. dollars and used a consumer price index to consider the effects of inflation on these currencies over time. I'd say the Page 99 Test is not particularly useful for my book, since this is one of the more technical sections of one of the more economics-loaded chapters, which might not appeal to all readers. However, the page does indicate the kind of rigor that went into the book. It is a chapter on slave prices in New York and New Jersey, and how to calculate the average values that New Yorkers assigned to their enslaved people. The page is interesting, as well, because "we" (I brought in a co-author, economist Michael Makovi, for this chapter), produce a novel way to measure the value of the New York pound that doesn't use the British pound as an intermediary, as previous economic historians have done. Yet, at the same time, the chapter relies on previous well-known work by John J. McCusker. The book's subtitle is "A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700-1827." This is one of the more economics-focused chapters, while two others deal mainly with demographics and the rest of the book is concerned with cultural history. However, these approaches to the past overlap in many ways, and as I argue in the book, they complement each other well.Visit Michael J. Douma's website.
--Marshal Zeringue
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