Bestselling books the week of 5/12/16, according to IndieBound*

What's flying fastest off the shelves at independent bookstores across America?

2. HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Rainbow Comes and Goes, by Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt, Harper
2. When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, Random House
3. Becoming Grandma: The Joys and Science of the New Grandparenting, by Lesley Stahl, Blue Rider - Debut
4. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo, Ten Speed Press
5. Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight, Scribner
6. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth, Scribner - Debut
7. Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren, Knopf
8. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Spiegel & Grau
9. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli, Riverhead
10. Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeremy McCarter, Grand Central
11. Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, Metropolitan
12. Five Easy Theses: Commonsense Solutions to America's Greatest Economic Challenges, by James Stone, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - Debut
13. The Third Wave, by Steve Case, S&S
14. The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues, by Patrick M. Lencioni, Jossey-Bass - Debut
15. It's All Easy, by Gwyneth Paltrow, Grand Central Life & Style

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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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