WHAT COUNTS: The Complete Harper’s Index, ...

WHAT COUNTS: The Complete Harper’s Index, edited by Charis Conn & Ilena Silverman (Henry Holt: $12.95). Conn and Silverman have compiled the oddball statistics that appear in each issue of Harper’s. Some of these off-the-wall figures seem to be nothing more than random data: the number of U.S. colleges that offer an undergraduate degree in jazz (77); the average weight of a male bear in Alaska (1,000 pounds) and Pennsylvania (325 pounds); the number of exclamation points in Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (2,343!). Although the authors concede that “numbers can be made to tell as many stories as a crooked lawyer or an old comedian,” the picture of the United States that emerges from the seemingly meaningless numbers is both revealing and alarming. More than 550 brands of bottled water are sold in America, but the written vocabulary of the average teen-ager has shrunk by 60% since 1945, 25% of families have a net worth of less than $10,000 and only 8% of the population believe President Reagan “always told the truth.” Go figure.