These were the 100 most popular non-fiction titles, based on circulation figures, in 2006. They are shown here
in order of popularity. Overall, titles about public affairs, and travel books, seem get to the most traffic. But also
new Southwestern titles are high demand, and there are some surprises here, like the Millard book about Theodore Roosevelt.
For making sense of this list, it's quite handy that so many non-fiction books have informative subtitles.
The world is flat : a brief history of the twenty-first century / Thomas L. Friedman
Marley & me : life and love with the world's worst dog / John Grogan
Blink : the power of thinking without thinking / Malcolm Gladwell
The city of falling angels / John Berendt
The lost painting / Jonathan Harr
Teacher man : a memoir / Frank McCourt
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything / Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America / Erik Larson
1491 : new revelations of the Americas before Columbus / Charles C. Mann
Sweet swan of Avon : did a woman write Shakespeare? / Robin P. Williams
Healthy aging : a lifelong guide to your physical and spiritual well-being / Andrew Weil
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed / Jared Diamond
Fodor's ... Mexico
Fodor's Italy
Confessions of an economic hit man / John Perkins
A man without a country / Kurt Vonnegut
Never have your dog stuffed : and other things I've learned / Alan Alda
I feel bad about my neck : and other thoughts on being a woman / Nora Ephron
Fiasco : the American military adventure in Iraq / Thomas E. Ricks
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books / Azar Nafisi
Natural cures "they" don't want you to know about / Kevin Trudeau
Ghost Ranch / Lesley Poling-Kempes
A new earth : awakening to your life's purpose / Eckhart Tolle
My life in France / Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
River of doubt : Theodore Roosevelt's darkest journey / Candice Millard
To the end of the earth : a history of the crypto-Jews of New Mexico / Stanley M. Hordes
109 East Palace : Robert Oppenheimer and the secret city of Los Alamos / Jennet Conant
Fodor's Spain
Talk to the hand : the utter bloody rudeness of the world today, or, six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door / Lynne Truss
Plan B : further thoughts on faith / by Anne Lamott
Men of salt : crossing the Sahara on the caravan of white gold / Michael Benanav
The witches of Abiquiu : the governor, the priest, the Genízaro Indians, and the Devil / Malcolm Ebright & Rick Hendricks
1776 / David McCullough
Fodor's ... Hawaii:
A people's history of the United States / Howard Zinn
Fodor's France
The botany of desire : a plant's-eye view of the world / Michael Pollan
Failed states : the abuse of power and the assault on democracy / Noam Chomsky
State of war : the secret history of the CIA and the Bush administration / James Risen
The hate factory : a first-hand account of the 1980 riot at the penitentiary of New Mexico / by G. Hirliman based on interviews with inmate W. G. Stone
Night / Elie Wiesel
Julie and Julia : 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen : how one girl risked her marriage, her job and her sanity to master the art of living / Julie Powell
The innocent man : murder and injustice in a small town / John Grisham
The South Beach diet : the delicious, doctor-designed, foolproof plan for fast and healthy weight loss / Arthur Agatston
Madrigal's magic key to Spanish / Margarita Madrigal
The essential Rumi / translated by Coleman Barks
The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals
The glass castle : a memoir / Jeannette Walls
Guinness world records
Algebra, the easy way / Douglas Downing
Rapunzel
Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies
Waking the tiger : healing trauma : the innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences / Peter A. Levine
Rich dad, poor dad : what the rich teach their kids about money-- that the poor and middle class do not! / by Robert T. Kiyosaki
The tender bar : a memoir / by J.R. Moehringer
What the bleep do we know!? : discovering the endless possibilities for altering your everyday reality / William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, Mark Vicente
The power of now : a guide to spiritual enlightenment / Eckhart Tolle
A year in the world : journeys of a passionate traveller / Frances Mayes
A woman in Berlin : eight weeks in the conquered city : a diary / by Anonymous
The Gospel of Judas : from Codex Tchacos / edited by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst
Self-made man : one woman's journey into manhood and back again / Norah Vincent
Stillness speaks / Eckhart Tolle
The tipping point : how little things can make a big difference / Malcolm Gladwell
Team of rivals : the political genius of Abraham Lincoln / Doris Kearns Goodwin
Garlic and sapphires : the secret life of a critic in disguise / Ruth Reichl
Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in America / Barbara Ehrenreich
Santa Fe houses / Christine Mather, Sharon Woods ; photographs by Jack Parsons
Crime beat : a decade of covering cops and killers / Michael Connelly
Barbra : the way she is / Christopher Andersen
The power of intention : learning to co-create your world your way / Wayne W. Dyer
Conversations with God : an uncommon dialogue / Neale Donald Walsch
Traveling the exotic : distinctive experiences in twelve unique countries / Glenn W. Ferguson
A crack in the edge of the world : America and the great California earthquake of 1906 / Simon Winchester
A death in Belmont / Sebastian Junger
Dogs of God : Columbus, the Inquisition, and the defeat of the Moors / James Reston, Jr.
Love smart : find the one you want, fix the one you got / Phil McGraw
Turn left at the Sleeping Dog : scripting the Santa Fe legend, 1920-1955 / John Pen La Farge [editor]
Pie in the sky : successful baking at high altitudes : 100 cakes, pies, cookies, breads, and pastries home-tested for baking at sea level, 3,000, 5,000, 7,000, and 10,000 feet (and anywhere in between) / Susan G. Purdy
Eat, pray, love : one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia / Elizabeth Gilbert
The left hand of God : taking back our country from the religious right / Michael Lerner
Under the banner of heaven : a story of violent faith / Jon Krakauer
The most scenic drives in America : 120 spectacular road trips
Fodor's Great Britain
Garfield gains weight / by Jim Davis
The myth of Santa Fe : creating a modern regional tradition / Chris Wilson
The Beatles
American vertigo : traveling America in the footsteps of Tocqueville / Bernard-Henri Lévy
Rainwater harvesting for drylands
Dryland gardening
The girl who walked home alone
South American handbook
In cold blood
More about this list...
Non-fiction is a different animal from fiction. Keep
in mind that in raw numbers,
the top-circulating non-fiction, whether viewed by author or by title, is running up only about a tenth of
the activity as the most popular fiction. (Or don't keep it in mind, if it depresses you.) If we were to lump these in
different ways-- travel guides by country, for example-- the list would look quite different. Many of the entries
above are books new in the last year or two, but certainly not all. Of course, while a book is still on the
7-day circulation shelves, its numbers pile
up much faster; as do the numbers for those books with plenty of copies, or with audio versions.
We could easily circulate several more copies each of such old favorites
as The people's history of the United States or Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish or Algebra, the easy way; or new
favorites such as Eckhart Tolle's The power of now or Chris Wilson's The myth of Santa Fe : creating a modern regional tradition. If we could have bought enough to saturate the demand,
these and many others of the titles above would have circulated even more than they did.
NEW! Most popular non-fiction authors.
This view immediately jumps popular childrens' series, cartoon series,
and authors of children's nonfiction into high relief, even though on the whole they are not authors people look
for by name. (Quick, who is Judith Jango-Cohen? Who is Allan Fowler?) The authors of books for adults are
inset, so there are (sort of) two columns:
Davis, Jim (Garfield books)
Cole, Joanna (Magic School Bus)
Hergé, (Tintin)
Browne, Sylvia
Chopra, Deepak
Schomp, Virginia (natural history picture books, including lots of dinosaur)
Fowler, Allan (mostly natural history childrens picture books)
Nhat Hanh
Parker, Steve
Gibbons, Gail
Simon, Seymour
Didion, Joan
Shakespeare, William
Marzollo, Jean
Goscinny (Asterix)
Friedman, Thomas L.
Watterson, Bill (Calvin & Hobbes)
Tolle, Eckhart
Dalai Lama, Bstan-dzin-rgya-mtsho
Hayes, Joe
Stone, Lynn M.
Bryson, Bill
Jung, C. G.
Gladwell, Malcolm
Armstrong, Karen
Weil, Andrew
Chomsky, Noam
Diamond, Jared M.
Heinrichs, Ann
Meadows, Graham
Landau, Elaine
Zinn, Howard
Mayes, Frances
Murray, Julie,
Kimmel, Eric A.
Stefoff, Rebecca,
Schaefer, Lola M.
Dyer, Wayne W.
Kalman, Bobbie
Markle, Sandra
Chodron, Pema
Ross, Kathy.
Grogan, John
Jango-Cohen, Judith (natural history picture books)
McCullough, David G.
Wick, Walter
Pollan, Michael.
Simmons, Marc
Asimov, Isaac
Castaneda, Carlos
Williams, Robin
Andersen, H. C.
Berendt, John
Madison, Deborah
Oliver, Mary
Cameron, Julia
Lamott, Anne
The way the list was generated
did a certain amount of useful lumping, what amounts to a
sideways 'popular subject' list: the several
titles which begin with (in order of frequency):
