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DOCTOR ZHIVAGO
Boris Pasternak
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Archive Gap
December 1958 NYT Strike — Lists Reconstructed
The *New York Times* did not publish on December 21 and December 28, 1958 due to a pressmen's strike. Hawes Publications reconstructed both weeks' bestseller lists from the adjacent weeks' data. Most entries could be reliably identified, but fiction rank 15 on December 21 remains unknown — the book that held that position appears to have been a single-week entry with no trace in the surrounding lists. Both lists are marked "unofficial" in the Hawes archive. Publishers Weekly's December 1958 issues likely carry the original list.
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AROUND THE WORLD WITH AUNTIE MAME
Patrick Dennis
AROUND THE WORLD WITH AUNTIE MAME
by Patrick Dennis · Harcourt, Brace and Company
14 wks on list
A series of episodes about young and frisky Mame in 1937.
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WOMEN AND THOMAS HARROW
John P. Marquand
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THE BEST OF EVERYTHING
Rona Jaffe
THE BEST OF EVERYTHING
by Rona Jaffe · Simon & Schuster
11 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.
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THE UGLY AMERICAN
William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick
THE UGLY AMERICAN
by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick · W.W. Norton and Company
6 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).
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VICTORINE
Frances Parkinson Keyes
11
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OUR MAN IN HAVANA
Graham Greene
13
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THE RAINBOW AND THE ROSE
Nevil Shute
Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.