America by the Numbers: A Field Guide to the U.S. Population

Is demography destiny? Corporate marketers and government agencies act as if it is, producing mountains of statistics about Americans―most always remarkably inaccessible and dry. Now, America by the Numbers puts the power of demography back in the people's hands, collecting and clearly explaining a vast amount of population data in easy-to-read, informative tables and graphs. From the new immigration to the aging of America, this guide reveals how the ebb and flow of population shapes every public and private decision we make.

In an engaging and accessible form, America by the Numbers ranges across the U.S. landscape as it offers the latest facts about racial conflict, class division, health, schooling, family life, crime, and political participation. The most recent in The New Press's highly successful popular guides to politics and economics―including Field Guide to the U.S. Economy and Social Stratification in the United States―America by the Numbers is both a practical reference on U.S. population trends and a probing examination of the roots of America's most pressing problems.

William H. Frey is a senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and a research professor at the Population Studies Center and Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, where he founded and directs the Social Science Data Analysis Network. His books include Diversity Explosion and, with Bill Abresch and Jonathan Yeasting, America By the Numbers (The New Press).