The 28.5-pound, $825, five-volume Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition is out, containing more numbers and comparisons than you can shake a stick at, all purporting to paint a useful picture of America Then & Now. But Joel Garreau says that “what it is, really, is a marvelous walk through a bizarre notion — that America, our culture and values, indeed our reality — can be described in numbers.”