Departments
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Week of 24 September 1999 |
Vol. III, No. 7 |
Feature Article
BU's favorite books listed on Amazon.com
By Eric McHenry
One shouldn't judge a book by its cover, the adage holds. But can one judge a university by its book-buying habits? BU's reading choices do appear to reflect the academic and intellectual breadth of the University community -- at least judging from the purchasing trends recorded on Amazon.com.
The popular Internet bookseller recently established "purchase circles," which allow the curious to see lists of books that are selling best in specified geographic areas, companies, organizations, government agencies, and institutions of higher education. BU's current top 20 is eclectic, comprising seven novels, six histories or works of general nonfiction, four computer programming guides, and three books on business and management. The list includes:
- Number 1: Frontpage 98 for Windows (Visual Quickstart Guide), by Phyllis Davis, et al.
- Number 2: The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, edited by Jonathan Riley-Smith, a collection of essays by a dozen prominent historians.
- Number 4: Real Options, by Martha Amram and Nalin Kulatilaka, a work that examines the importance of risk and uncertainty to considerations of strategic investment. Kulatilaka is a professor of finance and economics at SMG.
- Number 9: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond.
- Number 10: Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden (GRS'88), the blockbuster novel begun in a graduate Creative Writing Program workshop. Geisha, soon to be a major motion picture, also appears on the top 10 lists of Boston College and Northeastern University, and even manages number 13 at Harvard Business School.
Contents of the lists, updated weekly or monthly depending upon purchase circle size, are determined by the number of items Amazon.com sends to particular zip and postal codes, and by the number of orders placed from accounts with particular domain names. Only items more popular within the purchase circle than within the general population are eligible for inclusion.
Even if taken chiefly as an indication of what textbooks professors are assigning, the purchase circles reveal concentrations of interest at area universities. Boston College, for example, appears to be steeped in readings from the humanities. Six of its nine best-sellers are novels, and two of the other three are works of narrative nonfiction. Business and management texts, predictably, close out the Harvard Business School top 10, but also dominate the list representing Harvard University as a whole.
Studied closely, the lists might also arm University partisans with some ammunition for playful use against crosstown or cross-river rivals: a guide to getting a job in the business world, for example, features at number four on the Harvard list. Does this cast doubt upon the value of Harvard's vaunted diploma? Likewise, the current best-seller at Boston College happens to be Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence. One can imagine some of the Terriers' more rabid hockey fans having a field day with that.