All of this is innocuous enough. Nevertheless, there is a grander message lurking beneath this madness--and it's a disturbing one. The picture of America that emerges Seurat-like from the Index is one of a nation suffering from what only can be termed malaise.

THE BOOK gives credence to the major fears of Harper's upscale, overeducated readership. Namely, the military-industrial complex, pollution, cultural illiteracy, alienation and anomie are undermining America's pre-eminence and quality of life. The odd combination of Cassandra-like despair and Letterman-esque snidery at the folly of it all surely must be what accounts for the Index's following.

So we are told about the Defense Department. All about it, from the value of items it misplaces in a year ($1,013,697,000) to it's yearly phone bill ($84,800,000)...to the number of cockroaches (2,000,000) estimated to be roaming around the Pentagon. Making their own contribution to the old debate over guns versus butter, the editors inform that it costs 263 pounds of butter for an M-16 rifle. Statistic has become metaphor.

And then we return to the heartland. Fifty-seven percent of all Iowans think front-porch swings "should be brought back." Asked who they would like to return as should they be brought back in another life, 64 percent said they wouldn't mind coming back as themselves. (The four Boisians who voted for Mr. Potato Head for mayor perhaps should reconsider.)

What is creepy about reading the Index is the sense it conveys that modern society is crumbling. How else can you make sense of recurring statistics concerning how our lives are being contaminated, from the increase in the percentage of U.S. women between the ages of 20 and 24 in who are infertile today (11) as opposed to 1965 (4); the doubling of the number of recognized mental disorders between 1952 and 1987; and the pounds of chemical additives an average American eats in a year (9).

Occasionally the two obsessions of the editors meet--27 percent of Iowans, we learn, drink water with traces of pesticides. They live in a wasteland and their bodies are being turned into landfills.

Feelings of suspicion and cynicism linger long after the many statistics are forgotten. Ironically, the editors seem to lament the lack of meaningful political debate in America, yet rely on mere numbers to make their points. Stalin once bragged that "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic." What does that make the 1159 statistics in the Harper's Index? The stuff of fun conversation, maybe, but also cause for alarm.