World War II ended 80 years ago and was the pivotal period of the 20^th century, if not much broader. Still, authors wrote, publishers published, and readers read.

Notable Authors During World War Two (titles and year appearing on bestseller lists in the US)

Fiction

AJ Cronin (The Keys of the Kingdom – 1941, The Green Years – 1944)

Albert Camus (The Stranger – 1942)

Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead – 1943)

Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – 1943)

Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls – 1940)

Arthur Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited – 1945)

Franz Werfel (The Song of Bernadette – 1942)

George Orwell (Animal Farm – 1945)

John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath – 1939, The Moon is Down – 1942)

Kathleen Winsor (Forever Amber – 1944)

Lloyd C. Douglas (Disputed Passage – 1939, The Robe – 1942)

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling – 1938, Cross Creek – 1942)

Pearl Buck (The Patriot – 1939, Dragon Seed – 1942)

Sholem Asch (The Nazarene – 1939, The Apostle – 1943)

Sinclair Lewis (Cass Timberlane – 1945)

TS Elliot (Four Quartets – 1945)

William Faulkner (Go Down, Moses – 1942)

Nonfiction

Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf – 1939)

Anne Morrow Lindberg (Listen! The Wind – 1939)

Bennet Cerf (Try and Stop Me – 1945)

BF Skinner (Behavior of Organisms – 1938)

Bill Mauldin (Up Front – 1945)

CS Lewis (The Problem with Pain – 1940)

Edna Ferber (A Peculiar Treasure – 1939, Saratoga Trunk (novel) – 1941)

Ernie Pyle (Here Is Your War – 1943, Brave Men – 1944)

James Thurber (The Thurber Carnival – 1945)

Jean Paul Sartre (Nausea – 1938, Being and Nothingness – 1944)

Margaret Landon (Anna and the King of Siam – 1944)

Reinhold Niebuhr (The Nature and Destiny of Man volumes 1 and 2 – 1941 and 1943, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness – 1944)

SI Hayakawa (Language in Action – 1941)

William Shirer (Berlin Diary – 1941)

 

The New York Times Bestseller Lists for Sunday, September 2, 1945 (VJ Day, the final day of the war)

Fiction

1. A LION IS IN THE STREETS, by Adria Locke Langley (McGraw-Hill)
2. SO WELL REMEMBERED, by James Hilton (Little, Brown)
3. DRAGON HARVEST, by Upton Sinclair (Viking)
4. RICKSHAW BOY, by Lau Shaw (Reynal & Hitchcock)
5. THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND FATHER SMITH, by Bruce Marshall (Houghton Mifflin)

Nonfiction

1. UP FRONT, by Bill Mauldin (Holt)
2. A STAR DANCED, by Gertrude Lawrence (Doubleday, Doran)
3. BRAVE MEN, by Ernie Pyle (Holt)
4. WOOLLCOTT: His Life and His World, by Samuel Hopkins Adams (Reynal & Hitchcock)
5. SAINTS AND STRANGERS, by George Willison (Reynal & Hitchcock)

Source: Hawes Publications https://www.hawes.com/pastlist.htm

 

Best Selling Books of 1945

Fiction

1. Kathleen Winsor, Forever Amber
2. Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe
3. Thomas B. Costain, The Black Rose
4. James Ramsey Ullman, The White Tower
5. Sinclair Lewis, Cass Timberlane
6. Adria Locke Langley, A Lion Is in the Streets
7. James Hilton, So Well Remembered
8. Samuel Shellabarger, Captain from Castile
9. Adria Locke Langley, Earth and High Heaven
10. Irving Stone, Immortal Wife

Nonfiction

1. Ernie Pyle, Brave Men
2. Juliet Lowell, Dear Sir
3. Bill Mauldin, Up Front
4. Richard Wright, Black Boy
5. Bennett Cerf, Try and Stop Me
6. George and Helen Papashvily, Anything Can Happen
7. U.S. War Department General Staff, General Marshall’s Report
8. Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I
9. James Thurber, The Thurber Carnival
10. Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley

 

Source: The Books of the Century, compiled by Daniel Immerwahr

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Eimmer/booksmain