TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Nonfiction

Week of June 16, 1941

FictionNonfiction
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THE TIME IS NOW
Pierre van Paassen

THE TIME IS NOW

by Pierre van Paassen · Dial Press

5 wks on list

Discussion of Hitler's campaigns, their direct menace to America, and the steps to be taken immediately to stop Hitler.

6
NEW
LOW MAN ON A TOTEM POLE
H. Allen Smith
Cover of LOW MAN ON A TOTEM POLE

LOW MAN ON A TOTEM POLE

by H. Allen Smith · Doubleday, Doran

2 wks on list

H Allen Smith has sometimes been referred to as "the best-selling humorist since Mark Twain". Considering that he wrote against the likes of James Thurber, Robert Benchley, and S. J. Perelman, that's quite a statement. And probably true. He sold a million copies of each of his first several books, starting with Low Man on a Totem Pole. In this book, which might be called a fraction of his memoirs (Mr. Smith claimed he could have filled twenty), he recounts the high points of his life amid the human race -- a race he appreciated and observed with a keen nose for the humor hiding in the most unexpected places. Here is a panorama of unlikely people who really existed, of inconceivable things that actually happened, of the commonplace rarities of our frenzied epoch. Among others, there is the newspaperman who suffered under the delusion that Herbert Hoover had bladders on his feet: the man who thoughtfully and perpetually bounced turtle eggs on a bar: a deaf dentist who trained his dog to act as his receptionist; a child prodigy who couldn't talk any too well, but appeared to know more about swing music than the head usher at the Paramount Theater -- all these are part of Mr. Smith's life and times.

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