The Economic Growth of the United States 1790-1860.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1961. First edition of this work by the Nobel Prize-winning economist. Octavo, original gray cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the dedication page, "For Paul Douglass C. North." Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. On the eve of the Civil War the United States had already achieved rapid and sustained economic expansion. We had filled out our territorial boundaries, and the frontier was already encroaching upon the parched lands in the lee of the Rocky Mountains and moving east of the Sierra Nevadas. We were an industrial nation second only to Britain in manufacturing. Our expansion had been matched by an acceleration of economic well-being. The obstacles to American economic growth had been removed before the Civil War took place. That war was a costly and bitter interruption." "All readers will profit by the virtuosity with which the author has carried out his pioneering attempt to erect the structure of economic hisotry on the basis of a theory of development" (Carter Goodrich, American Historical Review). Douglas was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1993, "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.