Michael Lewis's 'Blockers' Tops Indie Nonfiction Bestseller List

Michael Lewis's Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State sits at number one on this week's Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for nonfiction. The list draws on sales from hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, provided by the American Booksellers Association and compiled by The Independent Publishers Caucus.

It's a list that rewards reading closely. John U. Bacon's The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald appears twice — at number two and, oddly, number eight — under the same Liveright imprint. Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet also double-dips, charting at 14 (Dalkey Archives) and 25 (Princeton Classics). Publishing data, like the lake it describes, has depths.

Who else made the top ten?

Emily Wilson's Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature lands at three. Robin Wall Kimmerer's perennial Braiding Sweetgrass holds at four for Milkweed. Jill Lepore's The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State takes fifth. The only non-author-driven entry, Guinness World Records 2027, parks at six, doing what it does every year. Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, first published in 1946, sits at seven — proof that Beacon Press's backlist outlives most frontlists. Peter King's The Game and Robert Macfarlane's Is a River Alive? round out the ten.

What does the full list tell us?

Nature writing dominates. Beyond Macfarlane's pair (Is a River Alive? at 10 and The Book of Birds, with Jackie Morris, at 15), the chart includes:

• Merritt R. Turetsky's Bogland (11)
• Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees (19)
• Kimmerer's Gathering Moss (29)
• Helen Whybrow's The Salt Stones (24)
• Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian's Forest Euphoria (13)

That's a lot of moss, bog and canopy for one top 40. Call it the Kimmerer effect, with Kimmerer herself accounting for two entries.

University presses hold their own. Princeton University Press publishes Eleanor Johnson's Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women (12) and the Carson reissue; Oregon State University Press carries Gathering Moss; the Library of America contributes Thurber's Dogs (26) and Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats (37). Cats and dogs, shelved twelve places apart.

Politics and religion thread through the back half. Kristin Kobes Du Mez charts twice — Live Laugh Love at 17 and Jesus and John Wayne at 30. Susan Neiman's Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era sits at 35, while Michael Lewis's older The Fifth Risk resurfaces at 31, a neat bookend to his new chart-topper.

The bottom ten mix Mary Roach's anatomy (Replaceable You, 23), a Verso cluster of theory (Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics, Frédéric Gros's A Philosophy of Walking, Dean Spade's Mutual Aid, Catherine Liu's Traumatized), and Rebecca Solnit's The Beginning Comes After the End at 38. Hu AnYan's I Deliver Parcels in Beijing (16) and Julianna Glasse's This Is What Happens When Women Read (40) close the frame with memoir and criticism.

The New York Times's Connections puzzle book, at 18, confirms that readers now buy games in book form. Caitlin Doughty's Smoke Gets in Your Eyes at 39 suggests death, too, remains reliably mid-list. The full Top 40 updates weekly at indiepubs.org/top40 — and if the past week is any guide, Kimmerer and Macfarlane will still be there.