Cheryl Russell

I did not rank this book higher because Russell at times does get a little preachy on some of the fact and stats she is presenting. She does provide some pretty good analysis of the numbers she presents, but in the few instances where she decides to interject with her morality or biases, it does get a little annoying. However, if the reader can put that little issue aside, then the reader will find this book to be pretty interesting. Russell takes a figure or a statistic (from various sources), and then she writes a short essay on it that explains it as well as places in a larger social context. So not only do you get the significance of a particular number, but you get an answer to why the number is significant, or as my old professor used to say to me, it answers the "so what" question. Russell covers a broad range of issues from work to sex to leisure to economics. If you are interested in trivia, this is a book for you. If you want a book you can pick up, drop, then pick up again, this is for you. If you want a book to browse, this is for you. And if you like reading about factoids and statistics, this is for you as well. Overall, if you want to get a pretty good picture of what life is like in the U.S., this is a good book. This book is also excellent in dispelling some common myths. For example, gun control seems to be a big issue, but in reality the majority of Americans actually favor some form of gun control. Read the book and find out why then politicians do not act on this. And also find out why it is that fundamentalist Christians tend to be the ones who get pregnant before marriage the most (in spite of their self-righteousness). It's all in there if you are willing to read it. This is definitely one I recommend, and it could be a book some people might consult over and over.
… (mer)

A collection of demographic statistics about various aspects of life in the US, collected from various sources and presented in a one-fact-per-page format. A few random examples: 90% of Americans have at least one sibling. 20% of people who have been married admit to having cheated on their spouse. The average American household is $55,000 in debt. 54% of legal immigrants settle in California, New York, Florida, or Texas. Etc., etc.

Demographer Cheryl Russel doesn't just report these facts; she also offers up a little bit of commentary and analysis on them. Not necessarily a whole lot, though. Again, each statistic gets one whole page, so there isn't exactly room for a lot of in-depth discussion, although many facts put together do sometimes end up painting a bigger picture. And while some of them are interesting, on the whole I never found any of it quite as intriguing as the subtitle promises.

Also, this book was published in 2008, and in many cases the most recent statistics it cites come from 2006. This is bad timing when it comes to taking an economic snapshot of the country; I can only imagine that a lot of the housing and employment statistics and so on had changed significantly by the time it hit print. It does show some of the seeds of today's economic discontent pretty clearly, however.… (mer)