Captkurt, I'm sure kids would enjoy In One Day immensely, but Parker did it for grown ups at the time. It originally evolved out of a series of covers he did for AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHICS magazine, but those happened because Parker has the kind of mind that naturally asks interesting questions and the skill set to get the answers and illustrate them. IN ONE DAY is another book that is out of print but it wouldn't do much good to bring it back unless you did it over. Still it would be interesting to see how the numbers in the book have changed since the mid 80s when we brought it out.

Here's a few from that time found at a site that has listed many more of them along with some background:

Do Unto OthersProject-Church of the Science of God

IN ONE DAY....

Americans lay about 2,750 acres of pavement, enough concrete and asphalt to make a bicycle path seven feet wide stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

A monumental accomplishment, but it happens every day.

American drivers use 313 million gallons of fuel—enough to drain 26 tractor-trailer tank trucks every minute.

We bring into the country 2,000 exotic birds that have ben captured in the wild. (One-fourth of the birds are dead on arrival, or die before they find an owner.)

Americans throw out 150,000 tons of boxes, bags and wrappers. It takes 10,000 tractor-trailer trucks to haul that mush junk to the dump.

We sack, compact and waste 200,000 tons of edible food. Junk 20,000 passenger cars (A bumper-to-bumper line 50 miles long) and 4,000 trucks and busses (In N.Y. city 20 vehicles are abandoned daily)

Americans driving on unpaved roads stir up 81,000 tons of dust, enough to cover a football field to a depth of 48 feet.

We use 450 billion gallons of water for our homes, factories and farms, enough to cover Manhattan to a depth of 96 feet.

I'd love to do the book over and compare then to now. After all, it has been almost 30 years since he started the project. That would really be instructive. In many ways it will show how far we've advanced or slid back on a lot of levels. Parker's a genius at making stats come alive.