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

    (And the Books We Remember Instead)

    1950

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book
    2. The Baby (this is apparently a picture book published by Simon & Schuster)
    3. Gayelord Hauser, Look Younger, Live Longer
    4. Frank Bettger, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling
    5. Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki
    6. Peter Marshall, Mr. Jones, Meet the Master
    7. Hubbard Cob, Your Dream Home
    8. H. A. Overstreet, The Mature Mind
    9. Clare Barnes Jr., Campus Zoo
    10. Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Belles on Their Toes

    Also published that year:

    E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art
    Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralf Waldo Emerson
    Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale

    1951

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Gayelord Hauser, Look Younger, Live Longer
    2. Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book
    3. Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, Washington Confidential
    4. Better Homes and Gardens Garden Book
    5. Better Homes and Gardens Handyman’s Book
    6. Rachel L. Carson, The Sea Around Us
    7. Clarence L. Barnhart, ed., Thorndike-Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary
    8. Walt Kelly, Pogo
    9. Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki
    10. The New Yorker Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Album

    Also published that year:

    Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
    Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
    Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

    1952

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version
    2. Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter
    3. Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, U.S.A. Confidential
    4. Rachel L. Carson, The Sea Around Us
    5. Tallulah Bankhead, Tallulah
    6. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
    7. Edward P. Morgan, ed., This I Believe
    8. Wilson Hicks, ed., This Is Ike
    9. Whittaker Chambers, Witness
    10. William Hillman, Mr. President

    Also published that year:

    Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (English translation)

    1953

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version
    2. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
    3. Alfred C. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
    4. Dale Evans Rogers, Angel Unaware
    5. Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living
    6. Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter
    7. Edward P. Morgan, ed., This I Believe
    8. Fulton Oursler and G.A.O. Armstrong, The Greatest Faith Ever Known
    9. Tommy Armour, How to Play Your Best Golf
    10. Polly Adler, A House Is Not a Home

    Also published that year:

    Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox
    Gerald Durrell, The Overloaded Ark

    1954

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version
    2. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
    3. Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book
    4. Betty Crocker’s Good and Easy Cook Book
    5. Grantland Rice, The Tumult and the Shouting
    6. Lillian Roth, Gerold Frank, and Mike Connolly, I’ll Cry Tomorrow
    7. Catherine Marshall, The Prayers of Peter Marshall
    8. Raymond Swing, ed., This I Believe, vol. 2
    9. Elmer Davis, But We Were Born Free
    10. Roger Butterfield, ed., The Saturday Evening Post Treasury

    Also published that year:

    Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet (English translation)

    1955

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
    2. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
    3. Edward Steichen, The Family of Man
    4. Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter
    5. John A. Schindler, How to Live 365 Days a Year
    6. Better Homes and Gardens Diet Book
    7. Billy Graham, The Secret of Happiness
    8. Rudolf Flesch, Why Johnny Can’t Read
    9. John Gunther, Inside Africa
    10. Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions

    Also published that year:

    James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

    1956

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Dan Dale Alexander, Arthritis and Common Sense
    2. David B. Guralnik, Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, concise ed.
    3. Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book
    4. Frances Benton, Etiquette
    5. Better Homes and Gardens Barbecue Book
    6. Morey Bernstein, The Search for Bridey Murphy
    7. Smiley Blanton, Love or Perish
    8. Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Book
    9. John A. Schindler, How To Live 365 Days a Year
    10. Kathryn Hulme, The Nun’s Story

    Also published that year:

    Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
    Kenneth Clark, The Nude

    1957

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Art Linkletter, Kids Say the Darndest Things!
    2. Don Whitehead, The FBI Story
    3. Norman Vincent Peale, Stay Alive All Your Life
    4. Catherine Marshall, To Live Again
    5. Better Homes and Gardens Flower Arranging
    6. Robert Paul Smith, Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.
    7. Bernard M. Baruch, Baruch: My Own Story
    8. Jean Kerr, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
    9. The American Heritage Book of Great Historic Places
    10. Jim Bishop, The Day Christ Died

    Also published that year:

    Roland Barthes, Mythologies
    Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures
    Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Towards Freedom

    1958

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Art Linkletter, Kids Say the Darndest Things!
    2. Pat Boone, Twixt Twelve and Twenty
    3. Harry Golden, Only in America
    4. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit
    5. Jean Kerr, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
    6. Better Homes and Gardens Salad Book
    7. J. P. Phillips, tr., The New Testament in Modern English
    8. Thor Heyerdahl, Aku-Aku
    9. Abigail Van Buren, Dear Abby
    10. John Gunther, Inside Russia Today

    Also published that year:

    Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
    Shelby Foote, The Civil War
    John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society
    John Maynard Smith, The Theory of Evolution
    John Steinbeck, Once There Was A War

    Pat Boone, Twixt Twelve and Twenty1959

    The best-selling nonfiction of the year:

    1. Pat Boone, Twixt Twelve and Twenty
    2. D. C. Jarvis, Folk Medicine
    3. Harry Golden, For 2¢ Plain
    4. Vance Packard, The Status Seekers
    5. Moss Hart, Act One
    6. Cliff Arquette, Charley Weaver’s Letters from Mamma
    7. William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style
    8. The General Foods Kitchens Cookbook
    9. Harry Golden, Only in America
    10. Alexander King, Mine Enemy Grows Older

    Also published that year:

    Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada
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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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