Library Journal Bestsellers

Nonfiction

March 15, 2007

The books most borrowed in public libraries. Based on a sampling of libraries across the United States.

Rank			Last Rank	Times on List
1		Jeannette Walls. The Glass Castle Walls grew up in a nomadic and disfunctional family.  When the family ended up in a West Virginia mining town, the children had to fend for themselves.  The Glass Castle is a story of triumph against the odds.	1	20
2		Augusten Burroughs. Running with Scissors The true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian house in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau.	2	9
3		John Grogan. Marley and Me Is it possible for humans to discover the key to happiness through a bigger-than-life, bad-boy dog? Just ask the Grogans.	3	22
4		Thomas L. Friedman. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century The timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.	5	35
5		John Grisham. The Innocent Man Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. In his first work of nonfiction, John Grisham delivers his most extraordinary thriller yet.	4	7
6		Eric Schlosser. Fast Food Nation Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions, where the business was born, to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike, where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths-from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.	6	6
7		Dave Pelzer. The Lost Boy Imagine a young boy who has never had a loving home. His only possesions are the old, torn clothes he carries in a paper bag. The only world he knows is one of isolation and fear. Although others had rescued this boy from his abusive alcoholic mother, his real hurt is just begining -- he has no place to call home. This is Dave Pelzer's long-awaited sequel to A Child Called "It".	7	6
8		Matthew Lesko. Free Money to Pay Your Bills Lesko's compilation of government programs of assistance.	8	13
9		Barack Obama. The Audacity of Hope The junior senator from Illinois discusses how to transform U.S. politics, calling for a return to America's original ideals and revealing how they can address such issues as globalization and the function of religion in public life.	9	4
10		James Frey. A Million Little Pieces When he entered a residential treatment center at the age of twenty-three, James Frey had destroyed his body and his mind almost beyond repair. He faced a stark choice: accept that he wasn't going to see twenty-four or step into the fallout of his smoking wreck of a life and take drastic action. Surrounded by patients as troubled as he - including a judge, a mobster, a former world-champion boxer, and a fragile former prostitute - and a droning dogma of How to Recover, Frey had to fight to find his own way to confront the consequences of the life he had lived so far, and to determine what future, if any, he holds.	10	27
11		Don Piper. 90 Minutes in Heaven On the Way home from a conference, Don Piper's car was crushed by a semi truck that crossed into his lane. Medical personnel said he died instantly. While his body lay lifeless inside the ruins of his car, Piper experienced the glories of heaven, awed by its beauty and music. Ninety minutes after the wreck, while a minister prayed for him, Piper miraculously returned to life on earth with only the memory of inexpressible heavenly bliss. His faith in God was severely tested as he faced an uncertain and grueling recovery.	11	10
12		Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.	13	33
13		Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet C. Oz. You: On a Diet The betsellering authors of the You series of books, present information on the best way to lose weight.	12	3
14		Barak Obama. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance In New York ... Barack Obama learns that his father--a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man--has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey--first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.	15	2
15		Karrine Steffans. Confessions of a Video Vixen	14	19