Best Seller Round-Up

"Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books."

- Charles Caleb Colton.

I. The New York Times.

Published June 12, 2009.

Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.
Fiction Hardcover: Skin Trade, Laurell K. Hamilton.

Nonfiction Paperback: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Liberty and Tyranny, Mark R. Levin.

II. Los Angeles Times.
Published June 14, 2009.

Fiction Paperback: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Fiction Hardcover: The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 5) Rick Riordan.
Nonfiction Paperback: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell.

III. Northern California Independent Booksellers.
For the week ending June 7, 2009.

Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows.
Fiction Hardcover: The Scarecrow, Michael Connelly
Nonfiction Paperback: When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell.




IV. Heartland Indie Bestseller List.
Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association
For the week ending June 7, 2009.

Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows.
Fiction Hardcover: Shanghai Girls, Lisa See.
Nonfiction Paperback: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Horse Soldiers, Doug Stanton.

"US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites" by Mark Danner

Mark Danner, writing in The New York Review of Books, examines a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concerning "black sites," a network of secret internment locations used for detention and interrogation of "high value detainees." The ICRC report describes the methods and “enhanced techniques” used by the CIA to interrogate prisoners in this “global internment system” established under the authority of President George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

• Link to Mr. Danner's article.
  

• The New York Review of Books press release about the Danner article.

Mark Danner is also the author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror.

Robert Silvers of the New York Review of Books

Robert Silvers, co-founder and editor of the New York Review of Books, is interviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. The November 20th edition of the NYRB marks its 45th anniversary.

The NYRB was born in 1963, during a city-wide newspaper strike in New York. Silvers told the Chronicle:

"'We felt you had to have a political analysis of the nature of power in America - who had it, who was affected," he recalled. "It's hard to sum up a paper. We published thousands of articles of many kinds. But the current running through from the beginning was - here we were, editors of this paper in New York. We had control. We could do whatever we wanted, if we could pay the printer.' By the third year, they were in the black.

"'It struck us that in so many parts of the world - under the Shah or under Brezhnev - people could be punished for publishing what they believed,' Silvers said. In response, the Review has continuously published in-depth interviews with political dissidents, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel."

Writing and Publishing: A means of speaking truth to power.