Mid-term Elections

I wonder whether politicians (or the people they hire to manage their campaigns) ever look at bestseller lists.

It was an idle thought that came to mind as I perused Amazon's list of topselling books. It was telling to me that six of the top seven all had political or economic overtones. They seemed like almost a laundry list of things that people appear to care about:

• Lawerence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
• Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century
• Thomas Ricks' Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
• North American Business Islamic Directory
• Steven Levitt's Freakonomics
• Patrick Buchanan's State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America

Granted, the lists are fickle enough that it would be difficult for anyone to develop any sort of hardfast theories about what message is going to sell with the public, but it does appear that at least the reading public are interested in educating themselves on important issues.

posted by Book Help Web Editorial Team at 7:12 AM |