1991 TOP 10 ALMANAC by Michael...

1991 TOP 10 ALMANAC by Michael Robbins and David Kaestle (Workman: $5.95, illustrated). The nutty statistics in this collection paint an often disturbing portrait of contemporary American tastes. The knowledge that the most popular National Park is the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee (8.3 million visitors in 1990), the most frequently ordered mixed drink is tonic with vodka or gin, or that the most valuable corporation in the country is Exxon, with $64.2 billion in assets, may help the reader win at Trivial Pursuit. But it’s disheartening to learn that the No. 1 best-seller on college campuses is Robert Fulghum’s dim-witted “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” that Marlboros are the top-selling grocery store item ($1.5 billion in sales, followed by Classic Coke at $1.278 billion), and that McDonald’s spent more than $253 million on advertising in the first half of 1990. Mene, mene tekel . . .