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The New York Times recently released its annual list of 100 notable books, comprised of the 50 fiction & poetry and 50 non-fiction titles deemed deemed most noteworthy by the editors of the New York Times Book Review.
The number of conservative titles on the list? Zero.
One might have assumed that the Times would have included at least a couple of token conservative or conservative-themed titles among its selections, in light of the fact that as TheBlaze noted in November, conservative authors have been dominating the bestseller lists, including the Times' own (see below).
4 of the top 5 bestsellers on the New York Times' Combined Print and E-Book Non-Fiction Bestseller list for the week of December 8th, 2013 are written by right-leaning authors. (Source: New York Times)
But based on Blaze Books' review of the New York Times' list, to the contrary of the 50 non-fiction titles selected by editors, none were written by conservative authors, let alone were conservative-themed. Non-fiction titles making the list included books like:
Other names on the list perhaps familiar to readers included Lean In by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and the bipartisan This Town by the New York Times Magazine's Mark Leibovich.
Even extending the scope to the 50 fiction & poetry titles the Times selected—featuring titles like Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem covering the lives of three generations of leftists in Queens, NY and more traditional ones like Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed—among such books not one was written by a right-leaning or conservative thriller author like Nelson DeMille or Brad Thor, both of whom published bestselling novels in 2013, nor a conservative commentator like Rush Limbaugh who recently released a bestselling children's book.
Blaze Books combed through the New York Times' Combined Print and E-Book Non-Fiction Bestseller list archives to tally the number of titles with right-leaning authors and/or right-leaning themes that were bestsellers at any point during 2013. The result: there were over 20 such books, all of which were excluded from the Times' list.
Lest one thinks it unfair to fault the Times given that a number of conservative titles were only recently released, the Times' list includes one "notable" title that has only been on the New York Times' non-fiction bestseller list for one week: My Promised Land by Ari Shavit (incidentally a self-described "left-wing journalist" and "anti-Occupation peacenik"), which comes in at #9, a full six spots below another first-time bestselling book, Glenn Beck's recently released Miracles and Massacres which opened at #3.
Check out our list of 20 New York Times best-selling conservative titles that the New York Times Book Review editors ignored, and be sure to thank the fine folks at 'The Gray Lady' for having single-handedly come up with your Christmas gift list. Note that our list is ordered by author and includes only those titles published in 2013--there were several other best-selling conservative titles this year published prior to 2013, excluded for consistency with the Times.
*Honorable Mention: This Town by Mark Leibovich.