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Hardcover Nonfiction
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AUTHOR/ PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
The Splendid and the Vile 1 New
Erik Larson/Crown
The Mamba Mentality 2 1
Kobe Bryant/MCD
Unknown Valor 3 New
Martha MacCallum & Ronald J. Drez/Harper
The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+ 4 New
Suze Orman/Hay House
Live 5 New
Sadie Robertson & Beth Clark/Thomas NelsonTITLE
AUTHOR/ PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
Food Fix 6 New
Mark Hyman/Little, Brown Spark
There’s No Place Like Space 7 5
Tish Rabe/Random House Books for Young Readers
The Hope of Glory 8 New
Jon Meacham/Convergent
You Are Enough 9 New
Panache Desai/HarperOne
StrengthsFinder 2.0 10 9
Tom Rath/GallupHardcover Fiction
TITLE
AUTHOR /PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
Blindside 1 New
James Patterson & James O. Born/Little, Brown
Green Eggs and Ham 2 5
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish 3 7
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers
Dog Man: Fetch-22 4 1
Dav Pilkey/Graphix
The Cat in the Hat 5 9
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young ReadersTITLE
AUTHOR /PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
Where the Crawdads Sing 6 2
Delia Owens/Putnam
Fox in Socks 7 —
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers
American Dirt 8 3
Jeanine Cummins/Flatiron
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse 9 4
Charlie Mackesy/HarperOne
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! 10 —
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young ReadersMethodology
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frommorethan16,000locationsacrosstheU.S.,
representingabout85%ofthenation’sbooksales.
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includeallmajore-bookretailers.Freee-booksand
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Thefictionandnonfictioncombinedlistsinclude
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languageeditions)andfeaturea
combinationofadult,youngadultand
juveniletitles.Thehardcoverfiction
andnonfictionlistsalsoencompass a
mixofadult,youngadultandjuveniletitleswhilethe
businesslistfeaturesonlyadulthardcovertitles.
[email protected].Nonfiction E-Books
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AUTHOR/ PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
The Splendid and the Vile 1 New
Erik Larson/Crown
Open Book 2 3
Jessica Simpson/Dey Street
Unknown Valor 3 New
Martha MacCallum & Ronald J. Drez/Harper
The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+ 4 New
Suze Orman/Hay House
Educated: A Memoir 5 4
Tara Westover/Random House
The Four Tendencies 6 —
Gretchen Rubin/Harmony
If You Tell 7 10
Gregg Olsen/Thomas & Mercer
Revolution 8 New
KT McFarland/Post Hill
Last Boat out of Shanghai 9 —
Helen Zia/Ballantine
Adorning the Dark 10 —
Andrew Peterson/B&HNonfiction Combined
TITLE
AUTHOR/ PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
The Splendid and the Vile 1 New
Erik Larson/Crown
The Mamba Mentality 2 1
Kobe Bryant/MCD
Unknown Valor 3 New
Martha MacCallum & Ronald J. Drez/Harper
The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+ 4 New
Suze Orman/Hay House
Live 5 New
Sadie Robertson & Beth Clark/Thomas Nelson
Food Fix 6 New
Mark Hyman/Little, Brown Spark
There’s No Place Like Space 7 10
Tish Rabe/Random House Books for Young Readers
The Hope of Glory 8 New
Jon Meacham/Convergent
Open Book 9 3
Jessica Simpson/Dey Street
You Are Enough 10 New
Panache Desai/HarperOneFiction E-Books
TITLE
AUTHOR /PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
Blindside 1 New
James Patterson & James O. Born/Little, Brown
Chasing Cassandra 2 New
Lisa Kleypas/Avon
The Warsaw Protocol 3 New
Steve Berry/Minotaur
A Nantucket Affair 4 New
Pamela M. Kelley/Pamela M. Kelley
Just One Year 5 New
Penelope Ward/Penelope Ward
A Spool of Blue Thread 6 —
Anne Tyler/Ballantine
American Dirt 7 3
Jeanine Cummins/Flatiron
Snow Creek 8 8
Gregg Olsen/Bookouture
Lilac Girls 9 —
Martha Hall Kelly/Ballantine
The Cardinal of the Kremlin 10 —
Tom Clancy/BerkleyFiction Combined
TITLE
AUTHOR /PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
Blindside 1 New
James Patterson & James O. Born/Little, Brown
Chasing Cassandra 2 New
Lisa Kleypas/Avon
The Warsaw Protocol 3 New
Steve Berry/Minotaur
American Dirt 4 2
Jeanine Cummins/Flatiron
Fox in Socks 5 —
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers
Dr. Seuss’s ABC 6 5
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers
Green Eggs and Ham 7 —
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers
Where the Crawdads Sing 8 3
Delia Owens/Putnam
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish 9 —
Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers
Dog Man: Fetch-22 10 4
Dav Pilkey/GraphixHardcover Business
TITLE
AUTHOR /PUBLISHERTHIS
WEEKLAST
WEEK
The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+ 1 New
Suze Orman/Hay House
StrengthsFinder 2.0 2 3
Tom Rath/Gallup
The Motive 3 New
Patrick M. Lencioni/Jossey-Bass
Atomic Habits 4 5
James Clear/Avery
Dare to Lead 5 8
Brené Brown/Random House
The Total Money Makeover 6 6
Dave Ramsey/Thomas Nelson
Dark Towers 7 1
David Enrich/Custom House
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 8 7
Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves/TalentSmart
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team 9 9
Patrick M. Lencioni/Jossey-Bass
The Ride of a Lifetime 10 —
Robert Iger/Random HouseBestselling Books|Week Ended February 29
With data from NPD BookScanBYJOHNCHECK
N
INETEEN FIFTY-NINE
was a miraculous year
for jazz, one that in-
cluded the recording
of Miles Davis’s “Kind of
Blue,” the bestselling jazz album of all
time; John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,”
a collection of challenging pieces that
raised the bar for aspiring musicians;
Charles Mingus’s “Mingus Ah Um,”
which included the powerful antiseg-
regation anthem “Fables of Faubus”;
and Ornette Coleman’s “The Shape of
Jazz to Come,” a harbinger of the free
jazz of the 1960s. Another influential
and top-selling album from 1959
was “Time Out,” the best-known—
and perhaps best-loved—work by the
Dave Brubeck Quartet.
“Time Out” may be what Brubeck
(1920–2012) is known for, but, as
Philip Clark reveals in “Dave Brubeck:
A Life in Time,” it is merely the high-
light of his long career as a composer,
pianist and bandleader. Mr. Clark,
a British music journalist, has been
writing about Brubeck for more than
20 years. The present book is a crys-
tallization of an interview he con-
ducted with his subject over the
course of several days in 2003, sup-
plemented by further interviews with
Brubeck, his family, his musicians and
associates, and extensive research in
the Brubeck archives. Thorough and
authoritative, Mr. Clark has done a
great service to his subject’s legacy.
Mr. Clark provides an excellent
sketch of Brubeck’s early years. His
mother, cultivated and deeply sensi-
tive, was his first piano teacher.
Because of her, music was always in
the air, resounding from one of the
three pianos kept in the house or
from the radio where she listened to
broadcasts of the New York Philhar-
monic. Meanwhile Brubeck’s father,
a rancher, imparted to his third son a
“rugged practicality,” along with an
independent streak and unshakable
sense of fairness. Mr. Clark nicely
evokes the California of Brubeck’s
childhood in the 1920s and ’30s, first
in Concord then in Ione, in the Sierra
Nevada foothills, where “wide-open
spaces” formed a “mythic” landscape,
as if out of “a John Huston movie
with a score by Aaron Copland.”
Following his father’s lead,
Brubeck decided to study veterinary
medicine at the College (now Univer-
sity) of the Pacific. Soon, though,
his passion for music won out. After
graduating in 1942, he enlisted in
the Army. Upon his discharge in
1946, and thanks to the GI Bill, he
studied with the French composer
Darius Milhaud at Mills College.
There he and a group of students
formed an octet devoted to explor-
ing the connections between jazz
and contemporary art music. For
Brubeck the group was a fertile envi-
ronment, a collective of young and
experimental musicians who enjoyed
nothing more than pushing each
other to explore new sounds and
ideas in their compositions and ar-
rangements. Their embrace of poly-
tonality—playing in more than one
key simultaneously—still sounds
daring. To support his family, he led
a trio at night spots in Oakland and
San Francisco. All was well until
1951, when Brubeck injured his neck
in a near-fatal swimming accident.
Slowly, with characteristic deter-
mination, he worked himself back
into shape. The other members of
the trio having taken jobs elsewhere,
he teamed up with a member of the
octet, the saxophonist Paul Des-mond, and formed a new group. The
chemistry of this “antipodal” (to
borrow Ted Gioia’s word) twosome—
Brubeck’s style bold and percussive,
Desmond’s understated and lyrical—
was key to the success that the
Dave Brubeck Quartet would soon
enjoy. In 1953, the quartet released
its breakthrough album, “Jazz at
Oberlin.” Columbia Records signed
Brubeck to a multiyear deal in the
summer of 1954. That winter he
appeared on the cover of “Time,”
the second jazz musician—Louis
Armstrong was the first—to do so.
Nothing the quartet recorded com-
pared to the sensation of “Take Five,”
composed by Desmond for inclusion
in “Time Out,” which featured several
tracks in unusual meters. The charm
of “Take Five” owes partly to its se-
ductive melody, delivered by Des-
mond with perfect nonchalance. Part
of its charm derives from Brubeck’spiano vamp, a catchy repeated figure
that is like the thumbprint of the
song. Part, too, can be attributed to
the drum solo by Joe Morello, who in
live performances would sometimes
forgo sticks or brushes, using his bare
hands to draw out the tones he de-
sired. A further charm of “Take Five,”
more difficult to describe, has to do
with the way it shapes listeners’ expe-
rience of musical time. Its title refers
to the five beats of its meter; these
beats divide into groups of three and
two, the three jaunty and off-kilter,
the two orderly and neatly setting up
the next downbeat. Many listeners
who bought “Time Out” and absorbed
its music sensed something unusual
about the song, even if they were
unable to explain it, something quite
different from the pieces on those
other landmark albums of 1959.
The intricacies of “Take Five” and
its companions on “Time Out” areDave Brubeck: A Life in Time
By Philip Clark
Da Capo, 445 pages, $30
Dave Brubeck’s ‘Time Out’
By Stephen A. Crist
Oxford, 272 pages, $21.95
explored in depth by Stephen A. Crist,
a musicologist at Emory University,
in “Dave Brubeck’s ‘Time Out.’” A
scholarly work detailing the album’s
genesis, reception and influence,
Mr. Crist’s book contains more than
60 musical examples and figures.
Though at times technical, the writing
is always clear and direct. Mr. Crist
compares various recordings of the
material from “Time Out,” furnishing
persuasive analyses of Brubeck’s and
Desmond’s solos and the like. He also
points to the popularity of Brubeck’s
compositions among musicians as
dissimilar as Anthony Braxton and
Boots Randolph, both of whom re-
corded “Three to Get Ready,” and the
congenial pairing of Chick Corea
and Gary Burton, who teamed up to
record “Strange Meadow Lark.”
Both Mr. Crist and Mr. Clark re-
count the hardships faced by one of
Brubeck’s musicians, Eugene Wright.
Mr. Wright joined the quartet in 1958
and became a model of reliability, not
only as a bassist but also as road
manager. His presence as an African-
American provokedcontroversy dur-
ing America’s sad years of segrega-
tion. Protests and counterprotests
arose at venues where the quartet
was scheduled to perform. Lucrative
concert dates were canceled when
Brubeck refused requests to engage a
white substitute bassist. A chance for
the quartet to appear on NBC was
waived when the pianist learned that
Mr. Wright would not be shown
onscreen. Brubeck’s steadfastness is
surpassed only by Mr. Wright’s forti-
tude in the face of indignity.
Writing for nonmusicians, Mr.
Clark generally avoids technical lan-
guage, depending on images and
sensations to carry his meaning. The
best of his metaphors hit the target:
“Take Five” possessed “a sound as
fresh and zingy as newly cut root
ginger.” The worst wildly miss the
mark: A bass player, Fred Dutton, is
described as “pushing” a succession
of notes “through the bowels of his
instrument.” Mr. Clark’s vocabulary
includes exotic touches (“reptant
theme,” “knurly paraphrase”); puz-
zling, then, is his occasional use of
clumsy words (“rethink” and “de-
clutter” as nouns) or unhelpful clichés
(“to the max,” “sex up,” “blissed-out”).
Two of the most durable songs
from the big-band era are “Laura” and
“You’ll Never Know.” Brubeck re-
corded both. His octet’s recording
of “Laura” was made in 1946 when
Brubeck, the arranger, was 26. The
solo recording of “You’ll Never Know”
was made some 60 years later. No
matter the decade, the approach is
instantly identifiable: the same thick
chords and shifting key centers,
the same pacing from simplicity to
complexity to resolving simplicity.
“His whole life,” Eugene Wright once
said, “he wanted to play the things
he could hear in his head.”Mr. Check is a professor of music at
the University of Central Missouri.The Horn-Rim Hipster
TAKE TWOSaxophonist Paul Desmond and pianist Dave Brubeck.
GEORGE RINHART/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGESBOOKS
‘Jazz is about freedom within discipline.’—DAVE BRUBECK