1. 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.
   
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
   
3. Freedom Evolves
   by Daniel Dennett
   price: $24.95
   As in his previous books, Dennett weaves a richly detailed narrative enlivened by analogies as entertaining as they are challenging. Here is the story of how mankind came to be different from all other creatures, how early ancestors mindlessly created human culture, and then, how culture gave humans their minds, their visions, moral problems--in a nutshell, their freedom.
   
   
   
4. Imagining Numbers: (Particularly the Square Root of Minus Fifteen)
   by Barry Mazur
   price: $20.00
   "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.
   
   
   
5. 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.
   
   
   
6. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
   by Samantha Power
   price: $30.00
   Drawing upon extensive sources and interviews with Washington's top policy-makers, Power tells the story of American indifference and courage in the face of the worst massacres of the 20th century. She makes a riveting moral argument for why, as both great power and global citizen, the U.S. must renew its vigilance against genocide.
   
   
   
7. The American Dream and the Public Schools
   by Jennifer Hochschild
   price: $35.00
   Until recent conservative attacks on the institution, public schooling in America was widely perceived as the ticket to the American dream: economic success, a meaningful and self-chosen life path and full citizenship. But in spite of decades of reform, the dream remains an elusive one for increasing numbers of poor, minority and immigrant young people. The problem, according to Hochschild and Scovronick, professors of government and educational policy at Harvard and Princeton, respectively, is an inherent contradiction at the heart of American educational goals. Our choices-whether about school funding, choice, vouchers, bilingual education, desegregation or special education (all topics covered thoroughly in the book)-pit the success of individuals (often wealthier, privileged students) against the common good of all students or the nation as a whole.
   
   
   
8. Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
   by Anthony Swofford
   price: $24.00
   When the Marines -- or "jarheads" as they call themselves -- are sent to Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqis, Swofford is there, with a hundred-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. It's one misery upon another. He lives in sand for six months, his girlfriend back home betrays him for a scrawny hotel clerk, he is punished by boredom and fear, he considers suicide, he pulls a gun on one of his fellow soldiers, and he is shot at by the Iraqis and by another unit of the U.S. military. At the end of the war, Swofford hikes for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and later is nearly killed in a booby-trapped Iraqi bunker.
   
   
   
9. 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.
   
   
   
10. 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.
    
    
    

1. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters
   by Greg Palast
   price: $14.00
   Investigative journalist Greg Palast has uncovered scandal, fraud, corruption, and lies in the highest seats of power—from the White House to corporate America. Known in Britain as “the greatest investigative reporter of our time” (Tribune magazine), Palast has broken some of the biggest stories of the past decade, including: How Bush killed off the FBI's investigation of the bin Laden family prior to 9/11; How the Bush family stole the election in Florida; and, How Enron cheated, lied, and swindled its way into an energy monopoly. These provocative exposés—as well as groundbreaking reports on the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization, Wal-Mart and more—are included in this collection of Palast’s most incendiary stories. Written in a no-holds-barred, in-your-face style, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a must-read for anyone who believes that the First Amendment is important enough to use and that democracy cannot be bought.
   
   
   
2. Selected Poems
   by Rita Dove
   price: $13.00
   Brought together for the first time in one volume are the astonishing poems of the nation's new Poet Laureate--the youngest poet so named, as well as the first African-American chosen for the position. Contains The Yellow House on the Corner, Museum, and Thomas and Beulah, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
   
   
   
3. Hoop Roots
   by John Edgar Wideman
   price: $13.00
   This multilayered memoir of basketball, family, home, and race is John Wideman's first nonfiction work since his National Book Award finalist, Fatheralong. Bringing "a touch of Proust to the blacktop" (Time), Hoop Roots tells of Wideman's love for a game he can no longer play. Beginning with the scruffy backlot playground he discovered in Pittsburgh some fifty years ago, Wideman works magical riffs that connect black music, language, culture, and sport. His voice modulates from nostalgic to outraged, from scholarly to streetwise, from defiant to unmitigatedly joyful in describing the game that has sustained his passion throughout his life.
   
   
   
4. 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."
   
   
   
5. 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.
   
   
   
6. 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.
   
   
   
7. The Secret Life of Bees
   by Sue Monk Kidd
   price: $14.00
   Now in paperback comes the intoxicating debut novel of "one motherless daughter's discover of . . . the strange and wondrous places we find love" ("The Washington Post"). A bestseller in hardcover, Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing work is set in South Carolina in 1964. A movie version is forthcoming from Fox Searchlight.
   
   
   
8. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
   by Alexander McCall Smith
   price: $11.95
   Combining a wonderfully satisfying reimagination of the mystery with a classic novel of Africa in the tradition of Isak Dinesen, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency tells the story of Precious Ramotswe, a delightfully cunning and a profoundly moral woman who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives." Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by evil witchdoctors.
   
   
   
9. 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.
   
   
   
10. Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress
    by Dai Sijie
    price: $10.00
    The surprise literary bestseller of the year, this is a beguiling fable that shines with the wonder of imagination, the beauty of romance, and the power of storytelling. Set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the novel tells the story of two hapless city boys sent to a remote mountain village for reeducation.
    
    
    

* The Harvard Book Store generates a bestseller list, and ranks titles to reflect overall sales for the week March 3 - 9.

March 3 - 9, 2003 Bestseller List

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