• Here are the Biggest Nonfiction Bestsellers of the Last 100 Years

    (And the Books We Remember Instead)

    1940

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Osa Johnson, I Married Adventure
    2. Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book
    3. Oscar Levant, A Smattering of Ignorance
    4. John T. Flynn, Country Squire in the White House
    5. Agnes Newton Keith, Land Below the Wind
    6. Joseph W. Alsop Jr. and Robert Kintnor, American White Paper
    7. Van Wyck Brooks, New England: Indian Summer
    8. Hans Zinsser, As I Remember Him
    9. Pierre van Paassen, Days of Our Years
    10. Betty B. Blunt, Bet It’s a Boy

    Also published that year:

    Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station

    William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary1941

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary
    2. Alice Duer Miller, The White Cliffs
    3. Jan Valtin, Out of the Night
    4. John Gunther, Inside Latin America
    5. Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Sweat and Tears
    6. Douglas Miller, You Can’t Do Business with Hitler
    7. Clifton Fadiman, ed., Reading I’ve Liked
    8. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington
    9. Irvin S. Cob, Exit Laughing
    10. Dirk van der Heide, My Sister and I

    Also published that year:

    James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
    Vita Sackville-West, English Country Houses
    Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

    1942

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Marion Hargrove, See Here, Private Hargrove
    2. Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow
    3. Elliot Paul, The Last Time I Saw Paris
    4. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek
    5. Major Alexander P. de Seversky, Victory Through Air Power
    6. Ilka Chase, Past Imperfect
    7. W. L. White, They Were Expendable
    8. Antoine de St. Exupéry, Flight to Arras
    9. W. M. Kiplinger, Washington Is Like That
    10. John Gunther, Inside Latin America

    Also published that year:

    Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí
    M. F. K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
    Aldous Huxley, The Art of Seeing
    C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

    John Roy Carlson, Under Cover1943

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. John Roy Carlson, Under Cover
    2. Wendell L. Willkie, One World
    3. Eve Curie, Journey Among Warriors
    4. Harry Emerson Fosdick, On Being a Real Person
    5. Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary
    6. Lt. Col. Gordon Seagrave, Burma Surgeon
    7. Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
    8. Walter Lippmann, U. S. Foreign Policy
    9. Ernie Pyle, Here Is Your War
    10. Marion Hargrove, See Here, Private Hargrove

    Also published that year:

    C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
    Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man
    William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society
    Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (English translation)

    Bob Hope, I Never Left Home1944

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Bob Hope, I Never Left Home
    2. Ernie Pyle, Brave Men
    3. Gene Fowler, Good Night, Sweet Prince
    4. John Roy Carlson, Under Cover
    5. Catherine Drinker Bowen, Yankee from Olympus
    6. Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision
    7. Ernie Pyle, Here Is Your War
    8. Margaret Landon, Anna and the King of Siam
    9. Quentin Reynolds, The Curtain Rises
    10. Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years in Japan

    Also published that year:

    Charles Stevenson, Ethics and Language

    Ernie Pyle, Brave Men1945

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Ernie Pyle, Brave Men
    2. Juliet Lowell, Dear Sir
    3. Bill Mauldin, Up Front
    4. Richard Wright, Black Boy
    5. Bennett Cerf, Try and Stop Me
    6. George and Helen Papashvily, Anything Can Happen
    7. U.S. War Department General Staff, General Marshall’s Report
    8. Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I
    9. James Thurber, The Thurber Carnival
    10. Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley

    Also published that year:

    Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar and Other Essays
    Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

    Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I1946

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I
    2. Joshua L. Liebman, Peace of Mind
    3. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It
    4. Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew
    5. Ernie Pyle, Last Chapter
    6. Thomas Sugrue and Col. Edmund Starling, Starling of the White House
    7. Victor Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom
    8. Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace
    9. Ralph Ingersoll, Top Secret
    10. Gene Fowler, A Solo in Tom-Toms

    Also published that year:

    John Hersey, Hiroshima
    Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care

    Joshua L. Liebman, Peace of Mind1947

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Joshua L. Liebman, Peace of Mind
    2. John Kieran, ed., Information Please Almanac, 1947
    3. John Gunther, Inside U.S.A.
    4. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History
    5. James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly
    6. Pierre Lecomte du Noüy, Human Destiny
    7. Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I
    8. Roger Butterfield, The American Past
    9. Margaret B. Boni, ed., The Fireside Book of Folk Songs
    10. Katharine T. Marshall, Together

    Also published that year:

    Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry

    1948

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe
    2. Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
    3. Joshua L. Liebman, Peace of Mind
    4. A. C. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
    5. Billy Rose, Wine, Women and Words
    6. Al Capp, The Life and Times of the Shmoo
    7. Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm
    8. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins
    9. Norman Vincent Peale, A Guide to Confident Living
    10. Betty MacDonald, The Plague and I

    Also published that year:

    Robert Graves, The White Goddess
    Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Cheaper by the Dozen
    Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

    Clare Barnes Jr., White Collar Zoo1949

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Clare Barnes Jr., White Collar Zoo
    2. Oswald Jacoby, How to Win at Canasta
    3. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
    4. Clare Barnes Jr., Home Sweet Zoo
    5. Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Cheaper by the Dozen
    6. Fulton Oursler, The Greatest Story Ever Told
    7. Ottilie H. Reilly, Canasta, the Argentine Rummy Game
    8. Josephine Artayeta de Viel and Ralph Michael, Canasta
    9. Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul
    10. Norman Vincent Peale, A Guide to Confident Living

    Also published that year:

    Joseph Campbell, The Hero with A Thousand Faces
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    Emily Temple
    Emily Temple
    Emily Temple is the managing editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins in June 2020. You can buy it here.
    https://www.emilytemple.net/





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