Who We Are Now : The Changing Face of America in the 21st Century

Rating:
Summary: Information overload!!!!
Review: Imagine the daunting task of taking the raw data from the 2000 U.S. census and trying to make sense of it all? "Who We Are Now" is author Sam Roberts heroic attempt to do just that. In fact, Roberts, a veteran New York Times journalist wrote just such a book a decade ago based on the 1990 census. I did not read that one but I must warn you that I found getting through the sequel to be a bit tedious at times. There are simply too many statistics for the average reader to process. I often became confused and as a result I lost interest in the points the author was attempting to convey.
Having said that, the reader is still likely to come away from this book with a better understanding of who we are as a people and of the emerging trends in the country. You'll learn how the racial and ethnic composition of the nation is undergoing dramatic changes, where our citizens are moving to and from and what the consequences might be of our aging population. But at the end of the day I think I would prefer to read about such issues in books primarily devoted to those topics. And while I commend Sam Roberts for his attempt, in my judgement "Who We Are Now" is far more appropriate as a research volume for scholars than a book one would read from cover to cover.