TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of October 26, 1958

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
Jump to
6
1
THE BEST OF EVERYTHING
Rona Jaffe
Cover of THE BEST OF EVERYTHING

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING

by Rona Jaffe · Simon & Schuster

6 wks on list

When it first published in 1958, Rona Jaffe's debut novel electrified readers who saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. There's Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor's office; naive country girl April, who within months of hitting town reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; Gregg, the free-spirited actress with a secret yearning for domesticity. Now a classic, and as page-turning as when it first came out, The Best of Everything portrays their lives and passions with intelligence, affection, and prose as sharp as a paper cut. Includes a foreword by the author.

10
1
EXODUS
Leon Uris
Cover of EXODUS

EXODUS

by Leon Uris · Doubleday

3 wks on list
13
NEW
THE SERPENT AND THE STAFF
Frank Yerby
Cover of THE SERPENT AND THE STAFF

THE SERPENT AND THE STAFF

by Frank Yerby · Dial Press

1 wks on list

The story of how Ducan Childers rejected the life of a fashionable physician to become a healer of the poor. It is the story of the opposition he met -- from society, from his wife, from his bitter enemies, and from his father-in -law. It is, too, the story of lovely Jenny Greenway, the one woman who loved and believed him.

15
NEW
THE UGLY AMERICAN
William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick
Cover of THE UGLY AMERICAN

THE UGLY AMERICAN

by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick · W.W. Norton and Company

1 wks on list

The multi-million-copy bestseller that blends truth and fiction in a “devastating indictment of American policy” (New York Times Book Review). A piercing exposé of American incompetence and corruption in Southeast Asia, The Ugly American captivated the nation when it was first published in 1958. The book introduces readers to an unlikely hero in the titular “ugly American”—and to the ignorant politicians and arrogant ambassadors who ignore his empathetic and commonsense advice. In linked stories and vignettes set in the fictional nation of Sarkhan, William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick draw an incisive portrait of American foreign policy gone dangerously wrong—and how it might be fixed. Eerily relevant sixty years after its initial publication, The Ugly American reminds us that “today, as the battle for hearts and minds has shifted to the Middle East, we still can’t speak Sarkhanese” (New York Times).

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.