The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)

The World Factbook is a continuously updated reference maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States government body responsible for it, covering basic country level data such as population, geography, government structure and religious demographics for every recognized state. Its authority comes from institutional maintenance and public accountability rather than from any named author, compiled from a mix of national census data, international organizations and the agency's own analysis, updated on a rolling basis rather than as one dated edition. The atlas draws on it for demographic and factual country level data, such as religious composition percentages, not for any interpretive or theological claim. Its limit is that as a government produced summary it states figures without extensive sourcing for each one, so a specific disputed statistic is best checked against the national census or survey it derives from.