10 best books of March, according to Amazon's editors

Amazon staff say these titles are the best of the new books being released this month – check out the full list.

4. 'Savage Harvest,' by Carl Hoffman

Hoffman of "The Lunatic Express" goes off in search of the real story behind the mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller (son of Nelson) in the 1960s. The young Harvard grad was last seen attempting to swim to shore off the coast of New Guinea and stories began circulating that he'd been killed by a cannibal tribe. This version of events was denied by his family and the Dutch government and it was concluded that Rockefeller had drowned. Nelson calls the book "fascinating." "He was just this guy who went off in search of adventures," she says of Rockefeller.

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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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