Bestselling books the week of 9/13/12, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best at independent bookstores across America.

2. HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden, by Mark Owen, Dutton
 2. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, Knopf
 3. Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens, Twelve
 4. I Could Pee on This, by Francesco Marciuliano, Chronicle
 5. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, Random House
 6. Dearie, by Bob Spitz, Knopf
 7. Darth Vader and Son, by Jeffrey Brown, Chronicle
 8. Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, by D.T. Max, Viking
 9. Double Cross, by Ben Macintyre, Crown
 10. Paris:  A Love Story, by Kati Marton, S&S
 11. Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health, by William Davis, Rodale
 12. The Amateur, by Edward Klein, Regnery
 13. Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life, by Gretchen Rubin, Crown Archetype
 14. The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, by Mike Lofgren, Viking
 15. How Music Works, by David Byrne, McSweeney's

ON THE RISE:
 21. The Secret Race, by Tyler Hamilton, Daniel Coyle, Bantam
 An insightful look at the world of professional cycling and the doping issue surrounding the sport.

2 of 8

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.