What we're reading now

What you read about, you think about. \nSo a look at America's reading list would reveal much about the preoccupations of the country's literate class. \nThanks to Amazon.com, that list is now online.\nAmazon tracks book sales by zip codes. Using that data, the company creates what it calls "Purchase Circles," bestseller lists for towns, states or even individual companies and government agencies.\nThe lists are riveting. What does it say about the U.S. House of Representatives, for example, that the No. 4 book on its purchase circle is Michael Beschloss's The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945? Or that No. 6 is J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?\nThe military's lists are on Amazon, too. Bestselling books at the U.S. Army are occasionally predictable (The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military at No. 2) but sometimes surprising (The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois, No. 4). The fierce team players in the Marines have a strong individualistic streak, to judge from No. 8: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.\nLearning that the bestselling book in the U.S. Air Force is Pacific Campaign: The U.S.-Japanese Naval War, 1941-1945 is like discovering that Jay-Z's favorite singer is Frank Sinatra. The Navy's No. 1? Tactical Missile Design.\nCorporate lists illuminate the nature of contemporary American commerce. No. 1 at clothing retailer The Gap, Inc., is Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life?\nAt the intellectual New York Times, William Taubman's serious biography Khruschev: The Man and His Era is No. 2, just above Robert A. Caro's Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson.\nSome reporters, though, aren't happy with their work, see no. 3 at the Washington Post -- I Went To College For This?\nOf course, sometimes lists just confirm stereotypes. The bestselling book for Microsoft, for example, is Compiling for the .NET Common Language Runtime.\nThe "greed is good" mentality is alive and well at Wall Street superpower Lehman Brothers. No. 7: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, a book about baseball whose title could apply to futures trading as well. Speaking of which -- No. 4 at the firm is Options, Futures and Other Derivatives, which at $135 is one of the pricier bestsellers in the purchase circles. And maybe Lehman Brothers knows something we don't: No. 6 is Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life.\nIndiana's cities' bestseller lists offer clues to each town's character. My hometown of Evansville is apparently gripped by an ennui that can only be cured by Rick Warren's self-help guide The Purpose-Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For?\nTerre Haute, a traditional hotbed of labor unrest, continues that tradition by reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.\nOur friends in West Lafayette are nervous about grad schools: No. 1 is The Official Guide for GMAT Review and No. 3 is Kaplan GRE Exam 2003 with CD-ROM.\nAnd Bloomington?\nWell, Bloomington's purchase circle proves something I've long suspected: That for all a university's intellectual pretensions, we're not reading Kant for fun.\nHome Buying for Dummies (No. 15) beats Baudolino (No. 16) by famous Italian super-author Umberto Eco. The only real academic classic on the list is No. 11, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. The biggest work of literature is No. 18, George Orwell's 1984. \nSo what are our professors, graduate students and administrators reading?\nThe most popular book in Bloomington, according to Amazon, is Mary Morris Heiberger and Julia Miller Vick's The Academic Job Search Handbook.