CIA World Factbook
Concise and authorative.
- Altapedia is quite similar
- The US State Dept also has country data
CountryWatch - appears to have much more data
More Resources – World
- United Nations Statistics Division - Not so much useful free data, but very official
- NationMaster - Compare countries on a wide variety of stats, in graph form
- Aneki - Ranks countries using statistics of a more entertaining kind
- Statistics Sources - Links to statistic sites, listed by country
- Elections and Electoral Systems - Big page, listed by country
- Population Index - a searchable and browsable database containing 46,035 abstracts of demographic literature published in Population Index in the period 1986-2000
- EIU ViewsWire - Business intelligence covering 195 countries
- Religious Statistics - By country or religion
- Census Finder - directory of free census records
More Resources – USA
- US Census Bureau - Lots of data from the 2000 census
- American FactFinder - Also from the Census Bureau, but more aimed at public consumption
- CensusScope - uses the Census data as well
- Name Statistics - see which are the most popular
- 50 States - A touch commercial, but plenty of useful info on the states and capitals