Under this heading, the Atlantic (Dec. 04) offered a short article or listing. Drawing on data from the World Drinks Trade 2004 (a British publication), the article listed the top ten consuming countries (from 1st to 10th): Luxembourg Hungary Czech Republic Ireland Germany France Portugal Spain Great Britain Denmark Russia ranked 15th overall but 1st in spirits consumption. Russia consumed relatively little beer and wine. The USA was 26th among the 45 countries that were ranked. The USA consumed relatively little wine and spirits. The precise criteria were left unclear, but there are graphic representations of the different forms of alcohol that each of the top ten country consumed. For me, the main surprise was that the Czech Republic wasn't listed first in per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks. I wonder what the rankings would be for consumption of various illegal drugs. Speaking of illegality, Sweden (I am told) consumes much of its alcohol either from illegal sources or legal homebrew, so official Swedish statistics are misleadingly low. Of course, none of these statistics indicate whether the drink consumption is concentrated in just part of the publication (as in the Irish Republic, where many people are abstainers or nearly so) or whether the drinking in spread across the day and the calendar or takes the form of sprees (as among young adult males in Finland). In other words, statistics conceal as much as they reveal.