THE WORLD'S MOST POPULAR BOOKS B S
(Investigator 79, 2001 July)
The following is a list of books with the highest printings. It excludes newspapers, booklets, brochures, pamphlets and magazines.
The list is based on information to hand and some of the figures are not the latest or final figures.
The list omits various separate translations of the Bible and the lower end of the list probably also omits other books.
The Bible (All versions) 1815-1999 3,880,000,000 Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-tung 1966-197 800,000,000 Good News Bible 1976-1995 122,000,000 The Highway Code (United Kingdom) 1931-1996 117,000,000 The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life 1969/1981 108,000,000 New World Translation (In whole or part) 1950s-2000 100,000,000 American Spelling Book 1783 Noah Webster 100,000,000 Automobile Association Handbook 1908-1991 98,000,000 Guinness Book of Records 1955-1999 85,000,000 The McGuffey Reader 1853-1879 William H McGuffey 60,000,000 A Message to Garcia 1899 Elbert Hubbard 50,000,000 Knowledge that Leads to Everlasting Life 1995 46,000,000 The Living Bible 45,000,000 Deutsche Bundespost 1993 (Initial print) 42,000,000 You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth 1982/1989 42,000,000 World Almanac 1868-1980s 40,000,000 True Peace and Security 1986 37,000,000 Your Erroneous Zones 1876 Wayne W Dyer 34,000,000 In His Steps 1896 Rev. C M Sheldon 30,000,000 To Kill A Mockingbird 1960 Harper Lee 30,000,000 Gone With the Wind 1936 Margaret Mitchell 30,000,000 Valley of the Dolls 1966 Jacqueline Susann 29,000,000 The Diary of Anne Frank 25,000,000 The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care 1946
Benjamin Spock25,000,000 Let God be True 1946/1952 19,000,000 The Late Great Planet Earth 1970 H Lindsey 18,000,000 American Red Cross First Aid Book 16,000,000 Is the Bible Really the Word of God? 1969 15,000,000 Roots 1976 A Haley 12,500,000 From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained 1958 12,000,000 Sophie’s World 1996 J Gaardner & P Moller 12,000,000 Life – How Did It Get Here? 1985 11,000,000 The Bermuda Triangle 1975 Charles Berlitz 10,000,000 What’s the World Coming To? D E Stanton 10,000,000 Things In Which It Is Impossible For God To Lie 1965 10,000,000 Member’s Handbook, Auto. Assoc. 1990-91 (Initial print) 6,000,000 Worldwide Security Under the Prince of Peace 1986 6,000,000 Divine Plan of the Ages 1886 6,000,000
Notice how often the books of one sect, the Jehovah's Witnesses, appear in the list. These are indicated by being underlined.In the JW sect everyone has to distribute publications of the Watch Tower Society door to door. To the JWs it's a necessary activity without which God won't give them salvation and eternal life.
Most JW books quickly go out of date because prophecies in them fail and many interpretations of Bible passages in them are discarded and revised. JWs refer to this as "new light", "new truth" and "the light gets brighter". Books previously distributed zealously in order to gain salvation are then kept from sight and reading of them discouraged.
Some JW books in the above list, for example, teach that people alive before World War I and old enough to understand what was then happening would live to see the end of the world or Armageddon. These people were referred to as "this generation" or "one generation" or the "last generation". However, the doctrine was changed in 1995 by giving the word "generation" a different meaning so that a "generation" can be indefinitely long.
The book Let God Be True (1946 & 1952) betrayed its title and actually let God be false. This is because it has calculations predicting that Armageddon followed by paradise on Earth would happen within the 20th century. You can work it out yourself from the chapter The Sabbath In Shadow and Reality. Tell JWs you wish to do this and see whether they'll loan you the book.
Great circulation figures for books are impressive but are no guarantee that the information inside is worthwhile or accurate.
Hundeds of truthful articles about Jehovah's Witnesses:
https://ed5015.tripod.com/
https://investigatormagazine.net
Dictionary of Jehovah's Witnesses at:
https://ed5015.tripod.com/jwdictionary/