Robert McParland - Bestseller: A Century of America’s Favorite Books

Bestseller

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McParland, Robert, author.

Title: Bestseller : a century of Americas favorite books / Robert McParland.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018029808 (print) | LCCN 2018033216 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538110003 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538109991 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Best sellersUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Best sellersUnited StatesHistory21st century. | Books and readingUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Books and readingUnited StatesHistory21st century.

Classification: LCC Z1033.B3 (ebook) | LCC Z1033.B3 M37 2019 (print) | DDC 38/.4500209730904dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029808

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book provides a listing of bestselling books and recalls the contemporary context in which those books were situated. The bestseller list gives us an opportunity to see what people were reading at the time. In considering the list, we might think about reader interests, the pulse of culture, the development of the book publishing industry, or the creativity of popular writers. By consulting bestseller lists we can reopen some of these books for enjoyment and ask what they say about American life. The popular book, which is the subject of this volume, captures images of life, refracting them as in a stained-glass window. The popular book registers a kind of enthusiasm, a suggestion of private and public consciousness. The bestseller list gives us a glimpse of the people, dreams, fantasies, hopes, and concerns of America.

The responses of readers to popular fiction and nonfiction may be found in library-based reading groups, in oral history collections, and in the pages of magazines and newspapers where there are letters to the editor. Today some readers post their comments about books on websites like Goodreads, or on their own blogs. Such gestures remind us that reading is not only a private activity but also a social one. The author is thankful to the Rutgers University Oral History Project for permission to share a few comments from individuals that they have interviewed. Any other brief quotations from readers are available on public website postings.

Bestseller owes much to editor Stephen Ryans creativity. Thanks also to Bob Batchelor for his enthusiasm for popular literature. My colleagues and students at Felician University continue to be a source of encouragement. On the home front, Debbie and Brian keep me in touch with popular films and television shows. For this book, there was a lot to read! No, I did not read all of this material. I made use of synopses, looked at reviews and comments by critics, and revisited many books I have read across the years. While reading Michael Crichtons Dragon Teeth or Senator Ben Sasses The Vanishing Adult, there were journeys back through Grisham, King, Clark, Uris, Forsyth, Ludlum, Clancy, Grafton, Koontz, and many others. I dusted off my fathers 1960 Allen Drury novels, the paperback of Anatomy of a Murder that was #1 on the list when I was born, my mothers paperback of Mary Jane Wards The Snake Pit. I read Danielle Steel for the first time. Today, on the way downstairs, I pass by bookshelves where more books awaitthe familiar ones I have read and the yet to be read pages, like a vast ocean of wonder still to be explored. As a friend of mine, a literature professor, once said to me, Well, you cant read everything. Yes, but you can try.

Reaching the Top of the Shelf: Discovering a
Century of Bestsellers

A bestseller is a book that has caught the imagination of many readers. It is a book that has energy and momentum in the market and is being successfully marketed by its publisher. In hardcover, paperback, or electronic form it has sparkled into life like a fireworks display and made its colorful dash across the sky. Bestsellers are plentifully available; selling briskly, they rise to the top of the list and many of them vanish quickly. You can buy a bestseller at that bookstore that you like. Bestsellers are in your local library too, or they soon will be. Yes, they are available online too. Press some buttons, include your payment, provide an address, and you will be getting that new book in a few days. (Or right away, if you order an electronic copy.) These days you can listen to books on CDs in your car while you are driving to work. You can download books onto your computer or smartphone. Or, you might go out for a drive down the road to try to find a copy.

Imagine that you are drifting down a road in Maine. On occasion the sky appears through the high branches and shadows. Someone has warned you about these desolate rural roads in Stephen King country: about the moose and the deer that could appear at any turn. There is strangeness and a chill, not only of the cold air, but from the Stephen King story you read last night, the one that kept you awake. The trees sway and seem to come to life near Route 222. Bangor becomes Derry, Maine; it transforms in a fog: a fictional place where the roads become lost. Youve read that Castle Rock has mad dogs and dead zones. The Mount Hope cemetery, ten miles east of Bangor, has a pet cemetery. You drive into town. The public library is surrounded by snow. It is a large building, stately and welcoming. The library has a quiet elegance, even if those three large windows to each side, their tops curved, might remind you of cemetery monuments. It has an austere beauty, like something out of a Henry James novel. Step inside and you can discover the bestsellers: Stephen King books, James Michener books, Agatha Christie booksromances and heroes and stories like an icy Maine winter that will chill you to the bone.

This book traces the path of hundreds of bestsellers that have seized the public imagination across the past one hundred years. Bestsellers reflect us. They hold the world in their pages. They are filled with dreams, drama and adventure, entertainment, information, and imagination. A book is a repository of culture, information, ideas, entertainment, expression, and style. Its popularity suggests that readers desire adventures, crave mysteries, or have a desire for self-improvement. These commercially successful books have enchanted and entertained millions. This book provides a composite of multiple bestseller lists, including the national lists produced by