Scouting for Titles

May 19, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

Tyler Cowen asks his readers to guess the best-selling book of all time (“And I mean the best-selling real book, not linked to either religion or communism?”)

Here is his answer:

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, two hundred million copies.
Next in line is Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts book and then Lord of the Rings.

Note that Tyler tactfully refers to Baden-Powell’s 1908 classic in the generic rather than by its actual title, which is so much more delightfully ambiguous: Scouting for Boys.



(Wikipedia has the full list.)