Fiction Bestsellers

1. Erich Segal, ­Love Story

2. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

3. Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream

4. Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave

5. Taylor Caldwell, Great Lion of God

6. Leon Uris, QB VII

7. Jimmy Breslin, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

8. Victoria Holt, The Secret Woman

9. Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt

10. Irwin Shaw, Rich Man, Poor Man

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant

Michel Foucault, The Archaelogy of Knowledge

Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood is Powerful

Kate Millet, Sexual Politics

Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, eds., The Structuralist Controversy

Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

James Dickey, Deliverance

Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

Studs Terkel, Hard Times

Joan Didion, Play it As It Lays

Dee Alexander Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

1. David Reuben, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex but Were Afraid To Ask

2. The New English Bible

3. “J”, The Sensuous Woman

4. Better Homes and Gardens Fondue and Tabletop Cooking

5. Robert Townsend, Up the Organization

6. Jim Bouton, Ball Four

7. William Morris, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

8. Julius Fast, Body Language

9. Rod McKuen, In Someone’s Shadow

10. Rod McKuen, Caught in the Quiet

William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic

Graham Greene, Travels with my Aunt

Gustav Eckstein, The Body Has a Head

Elizabeth Longford, Wellington: The Years of the Sword

The New English Bible with the Apocryhia

Joan Dutourd, Pluche, or the Love of Art

Nancy Milford, Zelda

Eleanor Clark, Baldur’s Gate

Richard Jessup, A Quiet Voyage Home

Jack Finney, Time and Again

C. P. Snow, Last Things

Dennis Bloodworth, An Eye for the Dragon: Southeast Asia Observed

James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

Henry Charrière, Papillon

Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream

Fiction Bestsellers

1. Arthur Hailey, Wheels

2. William P. Blatty, The Exorcist

3. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind

4. Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

5. Harold Robbins, The Betsy

6. Helen MacInnes, Message from Malaga

7. Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

8. James A. Michener, The Drifters

9. Thomas Tryon, The Other

10. John Updike, Rabbit Redux

E. O. Wilson, Insect Societies

B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks (posthumous)

Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight

Boston Women’s Health Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves

Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice

Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

1. “M”, The Sensous Man

2. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

3. Better Homes and Gardens Blender Cook Book

4. Thomas Harris, I’m O.K., You’re O.K.

5. David Reuben, Any Woman Can!

6. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich

7. Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin

8. Lawrence Welk, Wunnerful, Wunnerful!

9. Gay Talese, Honor Thy Father

10. Rod McKuen, Fields of Wonder

Joseph Wambaugh, The New Centurions

Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China

Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers

James Jones, The Merry Month of May

Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America

James Houston, The White Dawn

James A. Michener, The Drifters

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times

Frank Capra, Frank Capra: The Name above the Title

Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

Shirley Ann Grau, The Condor Passes

Gorden Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, The San Francisco Earthquake

Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin

Ralph G. Martin, Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, vol. 2

Fiction Bestsellers

1. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

2. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August, 1914

3. Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

4. Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

5. Irving Wallace, The Word

6. Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

7. Taylor Caldwell, Captains and the Kings

8. Marjorie Holmes, Two from Galilee

9. Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

10. Dan Jenkins, Semi-Tough

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas

Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity

David McCullough, The Great Bridge

David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

1. Kenneth Taylor, The Living Bible

2. Thomas Harris, I’m O.K., You’re O.K.

3. Nena and George O’Neill, Open Marriage

4. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman

5. Robert C. Atkins, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution

6. Better Homes and Gardens Menu Cook Book

7. Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Prescription

8. Ruth Montgomery, A World Beyond

9. Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

10. Better Homes and Gardens Low-Calorie Desserts

Vladimir Nabokov, Glory

Bill Mauldin, The Brass Ring

Martha Rofheart, Fortune Made his Sword

Ralph Maloney, The Nixon Recession Caper

Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer

John Hersey, The Conspiracy

Michael Crichton, The Terminal Man

Joan Haslip, The Crown of Mexico

Elaine Morgan, The Decsent of Woman

Walter Lord, The Dawn’s Early Light

Barbara Ward and René Dubos, Only One Earth

Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor

W. A. Swanberg, Luce and His Empire

Peter Matthiessen and Eliot Porter, The Tree Where Man was Born

Robert Crichton, The Camerons

Fiction Bestsellers

1. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

2. Jacqueline Susann, Once Is Not Enough

3. Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

4. Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

5. Gore Vidal, Burr

6. Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills

7. Irwin Shaw, Evening in Byzantium

8. Robert Ludlum, The Matlock Paper

9. Paul E. Erdman, The Billion Dollar Sure Thing

10. Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

Daniel Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society

Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures

Jürgen Habermas, Legimitation Crisis

Hayden White, Metahistory

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence

Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (written 1958–68)

1. Kenneth Taylor, The Living Bible

2. Robert C. Atkins, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution

3. Thomas Harris, I’m O.K., You’re O.K.

4. Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex

5. Jean Nidetch, Weight Watchers Program Cookbook

6. Mildred Newman et al., How To Be Your Own Best Friend

7. Christopher Finch, The Art of Walt Disney

8. Better Homes and Gardens Home Canning Cookbook

9. Alistair Cooke, Alistair Cooke’s America

10. Flora R. Schreiber, Sybil

David S. Viscott, The Making of a Psychiatrist

Margat Truman, Harry S. Truman

John Godey, The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three

Alan Lelchuk, American Mischief

Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler

Heinrich Böll, Group Portrait with Lady

Arthur Rubenstein, My Young Years

Daniel J. Boorstein, The Americans

Reay Tannahill, Food in History

Norman Mailer, Marilyn: A Biography

Morris West, The Salamander

Lawrence Sanders, The First Deadly Sin

Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

Gore Vidal, Burr

Fiction Bestsellers

1. James A. Michener, Centennial

2. Richard Adams, Watership Down

3. Peter Benchley, Jaws

4. John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

5. Joseph Heller, Something Happened

6. Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War

7. Harold J. Robbins, The Pirate

8. Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

9. John H. Watson, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

10. Irving Wallace, The Fan Club

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell

Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative

Studs Terkel, Working

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, vol. 1

1. Marabel Morgan, The Total Woman

2. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men

3. Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman

4. Alex Comfort, More Joy: A Lovemaking Companion to The Joy of Sex

5. Alistair Cooke, Alistair Cooke’s America

6. Carlos A. Castaneda, Tales of Power

7. Harry Browne, You Can Profit from a Monetary Crisis

8. James Herriot, All Things Bright and Beautiful

9. Charles Berlitz with J. Manson Valentine, The Bermuda Triangle

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency

Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman

Peter Bunchley, Jaws

Ernest Tidyman, Dummy

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History

Studs Terkel, Working

John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

* Not all data available for this year 

Fiction Bestsellers

1. E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime

2. Arthur Hailey, The Moneychangers

3. Agatha Christie, Curtain

4. Judith Rossner, Looking for Mister Goodbar

5. Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

6. Jack Higgins, The Eagle Has Landed

7. Irving Stone, The Greek Treasure: A Biographical Novel of Henry and Sophia Schliemann

8. Michael Crichton, The Great Train Robbery

9. James Clavell, Shogun

Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time (series)

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology

E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory

1. Billy Graham, Angels: God’s Secret Agents

2. Robert Ringer, Winning Through Intimidation

3. Harold H. Bloomfield, TM: Discovering Energy and Overcoming Stress

4. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

5. Sylvia Porter, Sylvia Porter’s Money Book

6. Laurence E. Morehouse and Leonard Gross, Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week

7. Charles Berlitz with J. Manson Valentine, The Bermuda Triangle

8. David Reuben, The Save-Your-Life Diet

9. David Niven, Bring on the Empty Horses

Fiction Bestsellers

1. Leon Uris, Trinity

2. Agatha Christie, Sleeping Murder

3. Jacqueline Susann, Dolores

4. Jack Higgins, Storm Warning

5. Peter Benchley, The Deep

6. Gore Vidal, 1876

7. Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick: or, Lonesome No More!

8. Harold Robbins, The Lonely Lady

9. Mary Stewart, Touch Not the Cat

10. Sidney Sheldon, A Stranger in the Mirror

Alex Haley, Roots

Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1

John Keegan, The Face of Battle

Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment

Buchi Emecheta, The Bride Price

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

1. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days

2. Alex Haley, Roots

3. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones

4. Gail Sheehy, Passages: The Predictable Crises of Adult Life

5. Charles W. Colson, Born Again

6. Erma Bombeck, The Grass ls Always Greener over the Septic Tank

7. Billy Graham, Angels: God’s Secret Agents

8. John Dean, Blind Ambition: The White House Years

9. Shere Hite, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality

Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

Joseph C. Goulden, The Best Years, 1945–50

Richard Yates, The Easter People

Judith Guest, Ordinary People

Edward Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace

Francine du Plessix Gray, Lovers and Tyrants

John Dean, Blind Ambition: The White House Years

Fiction Bestsellers

1. J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien, The Silmarillion

2. Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

3. Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

4. John Le Carre, The Honourable Schoolboy

5. Erich Segal, Oliver’s Story

6. Harold Robbins, Dreams Die First

7. Irwin Shaw, Beggarman, Thief

8. Erica Jong, How To Save Your Own Life

9. Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus: Erotica

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Carl Sagan, Dragons of Eden

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice

Robert Coles, Children of Crisis

Michael Herr, Dispatches

Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars

Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson

1. Alex Haley, Roots

2. Robert Ringer, Looking Out for #1

3. James Herriot, All Things Wise and Wonderful

4. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones

5. David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace, The Book of Lists

6. Charles Paul Conn, The Possible Dream: A Candid Look at Amway

7. Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden

8. Carlos Castaneda, The Second Ring of Power

9. Erma Bombeck, The Grass ls Always Greener over the Septic Tank

Sterling Hayden, Voyage: A Novel of 1896

Robert Lacey, Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor

Liv Ullman, Changing

Walker Percy, Lancelot

Brooke Hayward, Haywire

John D. MacDonald, Condominium

David McCullough, The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal

Studs Terkel, Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times

Dan Rather and Mickey Herskowitz, The Camera Never Blink

*Not all data available for this year

Fiction Bestsellers

1. James A. Michener, Chesapeake

2. Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance

3. Mario Puzo, Fools Die

4. Sidney Sheldon, Bloodlines

5. Judith Krantz, Scruples

6. Belva Plain, Evergreen

7. Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

8. Robert Ludlum, The Holcroft Covenant

9. Howard Fast, Second Generation

10. Ken Follett, Eye of the Needle

Nancy Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering

Edward Said, Orientalism

Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City

William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race
Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor

1. Erma Bombeck, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?

2. Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, Gnomes

3. James Fixx, The Complete Book of Running

4. Christina Crawford, Mommie Dearest

5. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Pulling Your Own Strings

8. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

7. Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century

8. Brian Froud and Alan Lee, Faeries

9. Theodore H. White, ln Search of History: A Personal Adventure

Fiction Bestsellers

1. Robert Ludlum, The Matarese Circle

2. William Styron, Sophie’s Choice

3. Arthur Hailey, Overload

4. Harold Robbins, Memories of Another Day

5. Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

6. Stephen King, The Dead Zone

7. Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment

8. Howard Fast, The Establishment

9. Gen. Sir John Hackett et al., The Third World War: August 1985

V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River

Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism

Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach

William Styron, Sophie’s Choice

Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics

Peter Singer, Practical Ethics

1. Erma Bombeck, Aunt Erma’s Cope Book

2. Herman Tarnower and Samm Sinclair Baker, The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet

3. Howard J. Ruff, How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years

4. Steve Martin, Cruel Shoes

5. Nathan Pritikin and Patrick McGrady Jr., The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise

6. Henry Kissinger, White House Years

7. Lauren Bacall, Lauren Bacall By Myself

8. Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court

9. Robert J. Ringer, Restoring the American Dream