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 Spock |
25,000,000 |
| 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.