SOURCE: A review of Saving and Spending, in American Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 2, April, 1987, p. 420.

In the following review, Crossick commends Saving and Spending’s survey of working-class financial behavior, but concludes that Johnson's study lacks systematic analysis and does not penetrate beyond existing research on the subject.

One of the least researched aspects of working-class social history is how people coped with the economic uncertainties that confronted them daily—that complex and presumably exhausting process of “getting by.” Our knowledge of the subject derives partly from the life histories of individuals, consisting mostly of oral testimony but also of autobiographical writings. It also comes from the history of institutions created to ease the financial uncertainties of working-class families—the friendly societies, consumer cooperatives, insurance companies and clubs, and the rest. Paul Johnson's study [Saving and Spending] pulls together contemporary and historical research to paint a picture of...