1. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
   by William Taubman
   price: $35.00
   Nikita Khrushchev was one of the most complex and important political figures of the twentieth century. Ruler of the Soviet Union during the first decade after Stalin's death, Khrushchev left a contradictory stamp on his country and on the world. His life and career mirror the Soviet experience: revolution, civil war, famine, collectivization, industrialization, terror, world war, cold war, Stalinism, post-Stalinism. Complicit in terrible Stalinist crimes, Khrushchev nevertheless retained his humanity: his daring attempt to reform communism prepared the ground for its eventual collapse; and his awkward efforts to ease the cold war triggered its most dangerous crises.
   
   
   
2. Regarding the Pain of Others
   by Susan Sontag
   price: $20.00
   In her first full-scale investigation of the rote of imagery in our culture since her now-classic book On Photography defined the terms of the debate twenty-five years ago, Susan Sontag cuts through circular arguments about how pictures can inspire dissent or foster violence as she takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity -- from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and Dachau and Auschwitz, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and New York City on September 11, 2001.
   
   
   
3. Coming of Age as a Poet
   by Helen 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.
   
   
   
4. Jarhead
   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 100-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. In this powerful memoir, he weaves his war experience with vivid accounts of boot camp, reflections on the mythos of the Marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family.
   
   
   
5. The DaVinci Code
   by Dan Brown
   price: $24.95
   In an exhilarating blend of scholarly intelligence, relentless adventure, and cutting wit, Robert Langdon (first introduced in "Angels Demons") and his new adventure combines the punch of Robert Ludlum, the intriguing historical touch of Umberto Eco, and the nonstop suspense of Michael Crichton.
   
   
   
6. Turning the Mind into an Ally
   by Sakyong Mipham
   price: $23.95
   Having grown up American with a Tibetan influence, Mipham speaks to Westerners as no one can: relating stories and wisdom from American culture and the great Buddhist teachers in idiomatic English. Strengthening, calming, and stabilizing the mind is the essential first step in accomplishing nearly any goal. This book's message makes it possible for anyone to succeed.
   
   
   
7. Reading Lolita in Tehran
   by Azar Nafisi
   price: $23.95
   "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is the astonishing true story of young women who met in secret each week to read and talk about forbidden Western classics--and their lives and loves--in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This book transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or social history, though it is superb as all three. Literature professor Nafisi returned to her native Iran after a long education abroad, remained there for some 18 years, and left in 1997 for the United States, where she now teaches at Johns Hopkins.
   
   
   
8. Terror and Liberalism
   by Paul Berman
   price: $21.00
   One of our Most Brilliant public intellectuals, Paul Berman has spent his career writing on revolutionary movements and their totalitarian aspects. Here he argues that, in the terror war, we are not facing a battle of the West against Islam--a clash of civilizations. We are facing, instead, the same battle that tore apart Europe during most of the twentieth century, only in a new version. It is the clash of liberalism and its enemies--the battle between freedom and totalitarianism that arose in Europe many years ago and spread to the Muslim world.
   
   
   
9. Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster
   by Melissa Fay Greene and David Black
   price: $25.00
   The miners of Springhill, Nova Scotia, walked into the mouth of danger daily. Of the 175 men on the afternoon shift of October 23rd, 1958, 75 never walked out. Greene discovered the records of this forgotten drama and, in stunning prose and detail, recreates the stories of those lost and found. 8 page photo insert.
   
   
   
10. Thinking on One's Own
    by John McGreevy
    price: $26.95
    Two centuries of struggles and sympathies between one religion and democracy in America. FOR TWO CENTURIES, Catholicism has played a profound and largely unexamined role in America's political and intellectual life. Emphasizing the community over the individual, Catholics have alternately challenged and supported American liberals on a variety of controversial issues, including slavery, public education, economic reform, the movies, contraception, the nuclear arms race, and abortion.
    
    
    

1. Atonement
   by Ian McEwan
   price: $14.00
   McEwan, Booker Prize-winning author of "Amsterdam, " has created a symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative combined with the provocation readers have come to expect from this master of English prose.
   
   
   
2. Globalization and Its Discontents
   by Joseph Stiglitz
   price: $15.95
   Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank. Particularly concerned with the plight of the developing nations, he became increasingly disillusioned as he saw the International Monetary Fund and other major institutions put the interests of Wall Street and the financial community ahead of the poorer nations. Rarely do we get such an insider's analysis of the major institutions of globalization as in this penetrating book.
   
   
   
3. The Hours
   by Michael Cunningham
   price: $13.00
   The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel becomes a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare"The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown, in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel, these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.
   
   
   
4. The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity
   by Tariq Ali
   price: $15.00
   In this timely and important book, new in paperback, Tariq Ali is lucid, eloquent, literary and painfully honest as he dissects both Islamic and Western fundamentalism.
   
   
   
5. Mrs. Dalloway
   by Virginia Woolf
   price: $12.00
   Direct and vivid in its telling of the details of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, the novel manages ultimately to deliver much more. It is the feelings that loom behind those daily events--the social alliances, the shopkeeper's exchange, the fact of death--that give Mrs. Dalloway texture and richness.
   
   
   
6. The Nanny Diaries
   by Emma McLaughlin
   price: $13.95
   With more than 650,000 copies currently in print and atop bestseller lists nationwide, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus' biting satire of the glamorous life on Manhattan's Upper East Side offers both an insider's view and a great read to puncture the glamour of Manhattan's upper class, and reveal the truth behind the Park Avenue veneer. Struggling to graduate from New York University and afford her microscopic studio apartment, Nanny takes a job caring for the only son of the wealthy X family. She rapidly learns the insane amount of juggling involved in ensuring that a Park Avenue wife who doesn't work, cook, clean, or raise her own child has a smooth day.
   
   
   
7. 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."
   
   
   
8. Power and Terror
   by Noam Chomsky
   price: $11.95
   Power and Terror, Noam Chomsky's highly anticipated follow-up to 9-11, is drawn from a series of public talks that Chomsky gave during the spring of 2002, as well as a lengthy unpublished interview. It presents Chomsky's latest thinking on terrorism, U.S. foreign policy, and alternatives to militarism and violence as solutions to the world's problems. Chomsky challenges the United States to apply to its own actions the moral standards it demands of others, and arrives at a surprisingly optimistic conclusion rooted in his faith in the power of an informed public.
   
   
   
9. McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
   edited by Michael Chabon
   price: $13.95
   From Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon and the editors of the award-winning iconoclastic magazine McSweeney's comes this collection of never-before-published stories from America's most popular and innovative writers reinventing the genres they love.
   
   
   
10. Pirates & Emperors, Old & New: International Terrorism in the Real World
    by Noam Chomsky
    price: $18.00
    The most up-to-date reflections on international terrorism by America's leading dissident, Noam Chomsky. This updated edition of Noam Chomsky's classic dissection of terrorism explores the role of the U.S. in the Middle East, and reveals how the media manipulates public opinion about what constitutes "terrorism." This edition includes new chapters covering the second Palestinian intifada that began in October 2000; an analysis of the impact of September 11 on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; a deconstruction of depictions and perceptions of terrorism since that date; as well as the original sections on Iran and the U.S. bombing of Libya.
    
    
    

* The Harvard Book Store generates a bestseller list, and ranks titles to reflect overall sales for the week March 31 - April 6.

March 31 - April 6, 2003 Bestseller List

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