At every decade since 1790, Americans have painted a vivid self-portrait by numbers that reveals in stunning detail who we are as a nation. As the last decade of the twentieth century opened, the bicentennial census of 1990 captured a country radically transformed - a transformation with profound social, economic, and political consequences that we are only beginning to grasp.

In Who We Are, Sam Roberts, urban affairs columnist for The New York Times, has fashioned the raw figures into a dynamic picture of the American people and a preview of where we're going as the next century begins.

A compelling, expertly guided tour of the places and personalities behind the numbers, Who We Are offers a gripping view of how and where we live, our changing complexion, what we're worth, and how we're aging. The average American is a 32.7-year-old married white woman living in a mortgaged suburban three-bedroom home heated by natural gas. She's also a myth. Society and its basic building block, the family, have been dramatically redefined by delayed marriage, deferred childbirth, and divorce.

One in four children born in the 1980s is being reared by a single parent; six in ten mothers with young children are in the labor force; three in a hundred households conform to the idealized family made up of a working husband, his dutiful wife, and their two children.

Who We Are mines the 1990 census's rich lode of statistics to chart seismic changes in every aspect of American life. Immigration has tuned the United States into what's been hailed as the first universal nation where people are more important than place and where the burrito has become as ubiquitous as the bagel. As they age, baby boomers are fundamentally altering the demand for health care and other services.

Corrosive racism has propelled the percentage of poor blacks to forty times the figure for whites; one in every four black men in their twenties is in prison or on parole. Roberts translates numbers into an insightful analysis of contemporary issues, ranging from the growing burdens of the middle class to the burgeoning of the suburbs and to where America will stand in the global economy

1. The next census, in 2000, will reveal an even more crowded and complicated world. Placing the nation's bicentennial census in valuable perspective, Roberts explores the forces reshaping American life and poses critical questions about our values, our economy, our country, and the kind of future our children will inherit.