Four new nonfiction hardcovers—A Paper Life; When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?; Your Best Life; and Magical Thinking—land on PW's chart this week and nary a one has any politics in them. We're not sure if that's a coincidence, or perhaps consumers are ready to read books in other categories. Still, the list boasts six political tomes, including Michael Moore's Will They Ever Trust Us Again? Letters from the War Zone from Simon & Schuster.
Will They Ever Trust Us Again? had a 600,000-copy first printing, while Moore's The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader is up to 350,000 copies after two trips to press. He has been on a 60-city "Slacker Uprising Tour" since the end of September, concentrating on swing states such as Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Wisconsin and his home state of Michigan. Moore is always a lightning rod for attention—so far on tour there has been a warrant for his arrest in Michigan, and in Utah, an offer of $25,000 was made to the hosting college if he canceled his stop there. Moore has averaged crowds of 5,000—10,000 at each location. He kicked off his national media run on October 4 with a pre-laydown interview on Howard Stern, followed by appearances on Bill Maher, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and NPR's Fresh Air. Soldiers who are featured in the hardcover have been doing radio interviews coast-to-coast, mostly on local NPR stations.
Controversy of another kind abounds in Tatum O'Neal's tell-all autobiography,
A Paper Life, in which she names many famous thespians in tales of drugs, violence and sexual abuse. The book was fully embargoed and had an October 12 one-day laydown. Media attention, not surprisingly, has been intense, and O'Neal has been or soon will be on all the national TV and radio shows. HarperEntertainment has 170,000 copies in print after four trips to press.
