THE NEXT HUNDRED MILLION

From The N. Y. Times


Photo : Michaelym Straub






THE NEXT HUNDRED MILLION
America in 2050
By Joel Kotkin .

At 7:46 a.m. on Oct. 17, 2006, precisely the moment that the Census Bureau estimated that the American population would reach 300 million, Emanuel Plata was born in a public hospital in Queens. His parents were Mexican immigrants. The doctor who delivered him was from Argentina. One nurse was from Russia, another from India. The anesthesiologist came from Bulgaria. As that benchmark birth demonstrated, in 2006 the United States was a very different country than it had been less than 40 years earlier, when the number of Americans topped 200 million. (The population passed 100 million five decades earlier in 1915.)









This Week from the N.Y. Times



Weeks on List
1
THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central, $14.99.) A 17-year-old spends the summer with her father in North Carolina and finds many kinds of love.
4
2
A RELIABLE WIFE, by Robert Goolrick. (Algonquin, $14.95.) Complications ensue when a wealthy Wisconsin widower in 1907 advertises for a spouse.
7
3
LITTLE BEE, by Chris Cleave. (Simon & Schuster, $14.) The lives of a British woman and a Nigerian girl collide.
1
4
DEAR JOHN, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central, $13.99.) An unlikely romance between a soldier and an idealistic young woman is tested after 9/11.
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5
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson. (Vintage, $14.95.) A hacker and a journalist investigate the disappearance of a Swedish heiress.
35
6
SHANGHAI GIRLS, by Lisa See. (Random House, $15.) Two Chinese sisters in the 1930s are sold as wives to men from California.
3
7
THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, by Audrey Niffenegger. (Harvest/Harcourt, $14.95.) Life with a dashing librarian who travels back and forth through time.
36
8
THE LOVELY BONES, by Alice Sebold. (Back Bay, $14.99.) A girl looks down from heaven as she describes the aftermath of her kidnapping and murder.
23
9
THE SHACK, by William P. Young. (Windblown Media, $14.99.) A man whose daughter was abducted is invited to an isolated shack, apparently by God. (†) Excerpt
92
10
LOOK AGAIN, by Lisa Scottoline. (St. Martin’s Griffin, $13.99.) A reporter learns that her adopted son may have been abducted from his birth mother.