Bestsellers

Scoring system: 10 points for first place down to 1 for 10th on The New York Times list (4,000 bookstores, plus wholesalers), the American Booksellers Association list (independent, sometimes highbrow stores), and two lists from The New York Times website: one for independent bookstores, one for chains. 1 A Beautiful Mind Sylvia Nasar

38 points (ABA: 1st; NYT: 2nd; PW: 1st; Amazon.com: 2nd)

GIST Those interested in learning more about John Nash's world, the intellectual hothouses of Princeton and MIT during the Cold War, when mathematics promised to provide the key to understanding everything, will see that a brilliant mind isn't necessarily a wise one, and intelligence isn't godliness.

16 points (ABA: 5th; NYT: not listed; PW: 2nd; Amazon.com: 10th)

GIST Mr. Ruiz, arguing that man is good and part of a pantheistic god, adds one more volume to the groaning shelf of New Age self-help books. He claims that external rules, laws, customs, and manners leave us shackled. Only by rising above the Ten Commandments or any other rules will we be all we can be.

CAUTION Some could be confused by the book's twisting of words like sin.

16 points (ABA: 2nd; NYT: 4th; PW: not listed; Amazon.com: not listed)

GIST In this lively exposé, Eric Schlosser depicts the fast-food industry as the source of many evils: the decline of the family farm, the homogenization of the urban landscape, and the enlargement of the American waistline. With sometimes twisted statistics and an eye for gruesome detail, he portrays a fast-food threat and demands a governmental solution.

CAUTION Contains scattered profanities.

15 points (ABA: not listed; NYT: not listed: PW: 4th; Amazon.com: 3rd)

GIST Kiyosaki pits rich dad (his best friend's father) against poor dad (his own dad) and shows how his dad's worldview kept him "poor." His father never achieved financial independence because he worked hard and saved rather than leveraged other people's resources. Kiyosaki makes some useful insights, but glosses over the risks of real-estate investing and ignores the biblical idea of occupational calling.

12 points (ABA: not listed; NYT: 1st; PW: not listed; Amazon.com: 9th)

GIST With dull, heavy-handed prose, Mark Bowden splices his story together from so many different perspectives that it is hard to follow. The narrative line-apart from revealing commentary on the Army's unit hierarchy -gets lost among outbursts of violence.

CAUTION Bad language, graphic violence.

Of the books attempting to make sense of Sept. 11, Thomas Boston's The Crook in the Lot, originally published in the 18th century and reprinted in 2001 by Soli Deo Gloria, is one of the best. Writing as a pastor in the Puritan style (proposition 1, premise 1, 2, 3), Boston defines a "crook" as a piece of adversity that continues over some time and "is the great engine of Providence for making men appear in their true colors," whether evil or good. We can stand up under adversity when we realize "it is of God's making.... Since it is your Father who has made it for you, question not but there is a favorable design in it towards you." Boston shows that God may be plunging us into adversity so that we can learn humility: He does not want us to be pridefully concerned with our own reputations. God may be revealing to us other sins as well; we must remember that "Since the crook in the lot is of God's making ... be reconciled to it and submit to it whatever it is." We should also learn from God's gracious actions, because "All the liftings up which the humbled meet with now are pledges, and but pledges and samples of the great lifting up awaiting them on the other side."