1956 Popular Books and Bestsellers

1956 Books & Bestsellers

1956 Fiction Top Ten Books

(according to Publisher’s Weekly)
1. Don’t Go Near the Water by William Brinkley
2. The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor
3. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
4. Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis
5. Eloise by Kay Thompson
6. Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
7. A Certain Smile by Françoise Sagan
8. The Tribe That Lost Its Head by Nicholas Monsarrat
9. The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
10. Boon Island by Kenneth Roberts

1956 Non-Fiction Books

1. Arthritis and Common Sense (revised) by Dan Dale Alexander
2. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (concise) by David B. Guralnik
3. Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, 2d edition by the Betty Crocker Editors
4. Etiquette by Frances Benton
5. Better Homes and Gardens Barbecue Book by the BH&G Editors
6. The Search for Bridey Murphy by Morey Bernstein
7. Love or Perish by Smiley Blanton
8. Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Book by the BH&G Editors
9. How To Live 365 Days a Year by John A. Schindler
10. The Nun’s Story by Kathryn Hulme

1956 Notable Literature

The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
The Organization Man by William H. Whyte
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, edited by Walter Kaufmann
The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling

1956 Book of the Month Club Selections

Bugles and a Tiger by John Masters
The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor
Memories by Harry S Truman
Toscanini by Samuel Chotzinoff
Helen Keller by Van Wyck Brooks
The Birth of Britain by Winston Churchill
The Ninth Wave by Eugene Burdick
Goodbye to Uncle Tom by J.C. Furnas
Don’t Go Near the Water by William Brinkley
In Search of Adam by Herbert Wendt
The Nun’s Story by Kathryn Hulme
King of Paris by Guy Endore
This Hallowed Ground by Bruce Catton
The New World by Winston Churchill
1956 Nobel Prize in Literature
Most Popular Books of 1956, according to GoodReads
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