Two books being reported by many independents are Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds and John Eidinow (#1 on the San Francisco Chronicle's list) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan, published this past May. Recent sales for both titles were buoyed by their placements on year-end best book lists. Reviews were excellent and both got PW stars. For the former, an Ecco/HC book by two award-winning BBC journalists, we said: "Tightly constructed and extraordinarily well written, this is a marvelous blend of lay and academic scholarship." Wittgenstein has 40,000 copies after six printings.
For Pollan's book (which also made several appearances on the NYT list), PW said, "Erudite, engaging and highly original." Random reports 110,000 copies in print and lists about a half-dozen placements on best-books lists (including the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly).
