Bestselling books the week of 8/16/12, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.

2. HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, Knopf
 2. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, Random House
 3. Double Cross, by Ben Macintyre, Crown
 4. Darth Vader and Son, by Jeffrey Brown, Chronicle
 5. Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, by Bob Spitz, Knopf
 6. Monkey Mind, by Daniel Smith, S&S
 7. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen, Random House
 8. Go the F**k to Sleep, by Adam Mansbach, Ricardo Cortes (Illus.), Akashic
 9. The Amateur, by Edward Klein, Regnery
 10. Let's Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
 11. Killing Lincoln, by Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard, Holt
 12. Quiet, by Susan Cain, Crown
 13. The Price of Inequality, by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Norton
 14. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, by Chris Hedges, Joe Sacco (Illus.), Nation Books
 15. The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, Random House

ON THE RISE:
 17. Why Does the World Exist?, by Jim Holt, Liveright
 A fascinating look at the riddle of existence from the ancient world to modern times.

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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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