1. My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor, Knopf
2. I Could Pee on This by Francesco Marciuliano, Chronicle
3. Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott, Riverhead
4. Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, Knopf
5. The Future by Al Gore, Random House
6. Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Knopf
7. The World Until Yesterday by Jared M. Diamond, Viking
8. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, Random House
9. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham, Random House
10. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Random House by
11. A Higher Call by Adam Makos, Larry Alexander, Berkley
12. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman, Knopf
13. Barefoot Contessa Foolproof by Ina Garten, Clarkson Potter
14. Francona by Terry Francona, Dan Shaughnessy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
15. The Dude and the Zen Master by Jeff Bridges, Bernie Glassman, Blue Rider Press
Mark Sappenfield
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.
