1. Imagining Numbers: (Particularly the Square Root of Minus Fifteen)
   by Barry Mazur
   price: $22.00
   "Imagining Numbers" is Mazur's invitation to those who take delight in the imaginative work of reading poetry, but may have no background in math, to make a leap of the imagination in mathematics. Then he shows, step by step, how to begin imagining imaginary numbers.
   
   
   
2. The Dante Club
   by Matthew Pearl
   price: $24.95
   When a series of gruesome murders erupts in 1865, only Boston's literary elite realize that the style and form of the killings are derived from Dante's "Inferno." Twenty-six-year-old Pearl brilliantly blends fact and fiction in this debut mystery starring Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
   
   
   
3. Songbook
   by Nick Hornby
   price: $26.00
   This holiday season, McSweeney's is excited to release Songbook — a brand-new collection of essays by Nick Hornby on 31 of his favorite songs and songwriters. This hardcover book has 4-color illustrations throughout and comes complete with a compilation CD filled with 11 songs discussed in the book. If you like Nick Hornby, and you like music, and you like artwork by Marcel Dzama, then this is just the thing for you and your loved ones.
   
   
   
4. Of Paradise and Power
   by Robert Kagan
   price: $18.00
   From a leading scholar of the country's foreign policy, this is a brilliant essay about America and the world that has caused a storm in international circles. European leaders, increasingly disturbed by U.S. policy and actions abroad, feel they are headed for what the New York Times (July 21, 2002) describes as a “moment of truth.” After years of mutual resentment and tension, there is a sudden recognition that the real interests of America and its allies are diverging sharply and that the trans-atlantic relationship itself has changed, possibly irreversibly. Europe sees the United States as high-handed, unilateralist, and unnecessarily belligerent; the United States sees Europe as spent, unserious, and weak. The anger and mistrust on both sides are hardening into incomprehension.
   
   
   
5. To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders
   by Bernard Bailyn
   price: $26.00
   From a premier historian--twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize--comes a set of illuminating sketches of the characteristics, accomplishments, and ambiguities of some of the key figures of the Revolutionary generation. 65 illustrations.
   
   
   
6. Pattern Recognition
   by William Gibson
   price: $25.95
   Numb at the loss of her ex-security expert father at the World Trade Center, Cayce Pollard refuses to give up on a secret assignment which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia to investigate Internet videos that are attracting a cult following. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film, and in the process will learn something about her father's life and death.
   
   
   
7. Coming Of Age As A Poet: Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath
   by Helen Hennessy Vendler
   price: $22.95
   With characteristic precision, authority, and grace, Vendler helps readers to appreciate the conception and practice of poetry as she explores four poets and their first "perfect" works. 4 halftones.
   
   
   
8. Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy
   by Kwame Anthony Appiah
   price: $30.00
   With a background in scholarly and journalistic writing, Appiah covers the central topics of philosophy--mind, knowledge, language, science, morality politics, law, and metaphysics. a thorough, vividly written introduction to contemporary philosophy and some of the most crucial questions of human existence: the nature of mind and knowledge, the status of moral claims, the existence of God, the role of science, and the mysteries of language, among them.
   
   
   
9. The Master Butcher's Singing Club
   by Louise Erdrich
   price: $25.95
   In beautiful early novels such as Love Medicine and Tracks, Louise Erdrich reckons with the Native-American strain in her own ancestry, interweaving ancient folklore and contemporary life. Now, in The Master Butchers Singing Club, Erdrich pays tribute to the other side of her bloodline. She tells us in the acknowledgements that her grandfather was a butcher who fought on the German side in World War I, and whose sons served on the American side in World War II. Out of this poignant scrap of autobiography arises a grand and generous fiction, Erdrich's most sweeping and ambitious tale yet.
   
   
   
10. A Human Being Died That Night
    by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
    price: $24.00
    In this acutely nuanced and original study of a state-sanctioned mass murdered, Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who grew up in a black South African township, enters Pretoria's maximum security prison to meet a man called "Dr. Death" who is serving 212 years in prison for crimes against humanity.
    
    
    

1. Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair
   by Martha Minow
   price: $17.00
   "Breaking the Cycles of Hatred represents a unique blend of political and legal theory, one that focuses on the double-edged role of memory in fueling cycles of hatred and maintaining justice and personal integrity. Its centerpiece comprises three penetrating essays by Minow. She argues that innovative legal institutions and practices, such as truth commissions and civil damage actions against groups that sponsor hate, often work better than more conventional criminal proceedings and sanctions. Minow also calls for more sustained attention to the underlying dynamics of violence, the connections between intergroup and intrafamily violence, and the wide range of possible responses to violence beyond criminalization.
   
   
   
2. John Henry Days
   by Colson Whitehead
   price: $14.00
   This ingenious examination of the significance of an American folk hero follows freeloading hack writer J. Sutter as he travels to a small town in West Virginia to report on its John Henry Days celebration. In a crowd of wise-cracking New York correspondents, he is the only black reporter, and his experience provides a juxtaposition to that of the famed railroad worker who died after defeating a steam drill in a much-mythologized contest. While the novel focuses on Sutter and the idiosyncratic folks he meets at the festival, it also traces the development of the John Henry ballad and flashes back in time to introduce real-life figures like Paul Robeson, and, of course, the steel-driving man himself.
   
   
   
3. Salt
   by Mark Kurlansky
   price: $15.00
   The bestselling author of "Cod" and "The Basque History" turns his attention to salt, a common household item with a long and intriguing history. In this multilayered masterpiece, Kurlansky explains how salt provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions.
   
   
   
4. Bel Canto
   by Ann Patchett
   price: $13.95
   A novel that is as lyrical and profound as it is unforgettable, "Bel Canto" engenders in the reader the very passion for art and the language of music that its characters discover. A virtuoso performance by an important writer.
   
   
   
5. Dreaming War
   by Gore Vidal
   price: $11.95
   Vidal confronts the Cheney-Bush junta head on in a series of devastating essays that demolish the lies the American Empire lives by, unveiling a counter-history that traces the origins of America's current imperial ambitions to the experience of World War Two and the post-war Truman doctrine. And now, with the Cheney-Bush leading us into permanent war, Vidal asks whose interests are served by this doctrine of pre-emptive war? Was Afghanistan turned to rubble to avenge the 3,000 slaughtered on September 11? Or was "the unlovely Osama chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan?" After all he was abruptly replaced with Saddam Hussein once the Taliban were overthrown. And while "evidence" is now being invented to connect Saddam with 9/11, the current administration are not helped by "stories in the U.S. press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must- for the sake of the free world- be reassigned to U.S. consortiums."
   
   
   
6. Breath, Eyes, Memory
   by Edwidge Danticat
   price: $12.00
   An unforgettable novel that shimmers with the wonder and terror of its author's native Haiti. Set in the island's impoverished villages and in New York's Haitian community, this is the story of Sophie Caco, who was conceived in an act of violence, abandoned by her mother and then summoned to America. In New York, Sophie discovers that Haiti imposes harsh rules on its own.
   
   
   
7. Spies
   by Michael Frayn
   price: $13.00
   In gripping prose charged with emotional intensity, this national bestseller by the author of "Headlong" reaches into the moral confusion of two boys in wartime London to reveal a reality filled with deceptions and betrayals, where the bonds of friendship, marriage, and family are unraveled by cowardice and erotic desire.
   
   
   
8. Nickel and Dimed
   by Barbara Ehrenreich
   price: $13.00
   A bestseller in hardcover, "Nickel and Dimed" reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way the nation perceives its working poor.
   
   
   
9. Dumped
   by B. Delores Max
   price: $14.00
   Literature is full of lyrical odes to the glory of falling in love. But what of its opposite--the moment when it becomes clear that things are indisputably over? "Dumped" is a survey of every type of romantic crackup, stories full of the hilarity, wisdom, insight, and sometimes, yes, fierce revenges of some of the most memorable broken hearts in recent literature.
   
   
   
10. Gracefully Insane
    by Alex Beam
    price: $15.00
    An entertaining and poignant social history of McLean Hospital--a temporary home to many of the troubled geniuses of our age--this book explores the evolution of the treatment of mental illness from the early 19th century to today. Photos.
    
    
    

* The Harvard Book Store generates a bestseller list, and ranks titles to reflect overall sales for the week February 24 - March 2.

February 24 - March 2, 2003 Bestseller List

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