1. Zealot, by Reza Aslan, Random House
2. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, by David Sedaris, Little Brown
3. This Town, by Mark Leibovich, Blue Rider
4. William Shakespeare's Star Wars, by Ian Doescher, Quirk
5. Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg, Knopf
6. I Could Pee on This, by Francesco Marciuliano, Chronicle
7. Grumpy Cat: A Grumpy Book, by Grumpy Cat, Chronicle
8. I Could Chew on This, by Francesco Marciuliano, Chronicle
9. Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East- Debut, by Scott Anderson, Doubleday
10. The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown, Viking
11. Jerusalem: A Cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, Ten Speed Press
12. The Telling Room, by Michael Paterniti, Dial
13. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, Random House
14. Darth Vader and Son, by Jeffrey Brown, Chronicle
15. Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America- Debut, by Dan Balz, Viking
On the Rise:
19. These Few Precious Days, by Christopher Andersen, Gallery
Andersen's intimate, behind-the-scenes look at John and Jackie Kennedy's final year together.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
