Bestselling books the week of 1/12/12, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.

2. HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, S&S
 2. Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, FSG
 3. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, Random House
 4. Catherine the Great, by Robert K. Massie, Random House
 5. In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson, Crown
 6. Goodnight iPad, by Ann Droyd, Blue Rider
 7. Go the F**k to Sleep, by Adam Mansbach, Ricardo Cortes (Illus.), Akashic
 8. Killing Lincoln, by Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
 9. Boomerang, by Michael Lewis, Norton
 10. The Swerve, by Stephen J. Greenblatt, Norton
 11. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), by Mindy Kaling, Crown Archetype
 12. Blue Nights, by Joan Didion, Knopf
 13. Pity The Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, by Thomas Frank, Metropolitan
 14. Jack Kennedy, by Chris Matthews, S&S
 15. A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Neil MacGregor, Viking, $45, 9780670022700

ON THE RISE:

21. American Sniper, by Chris Kyle, et al., Morrow
 An eyewitness account of war by a Navy SEAL who is the most lethal sniper in United States military history.

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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.

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