Here are the Biggest Nonfiction Bestsellers of the Last 100 Years

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

1941

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

1943

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)

1944

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

1945

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

1946

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

1947

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

1949

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