Unlike the city's more upscale newspapers. presumably with more literate readers, like the Times and Herald-Tribune, which had sizable Sunday and daily book sections filled with ads, the Sunday News of April 14 limited its book coverage to a best seller list compiled from reports from the book departments of A&S, Bloomingdale's and Macy's as well as Brentano, Doubleday, Putnam and Womrath, which were the major bookstore chains in New York in 1946.
Contrary to myth, independent bookstores were not major players at this time. Most readers bought books through book clubs or mail order or at department stores or major chains most of which were owned by publishers. Book sales were a secondary activity for the many Womrath's throughout the metropolitan area which made much of their revenue through renting light fiction and mysteries, sort of a literary Blockbusters, a business threatened by the advent of cheap paperbacks just before the war.
The best sellers per the Sunday News:
FICTION
Arch of Triumph by Erich Maria Remarque: A melodramatic story about a doomed romance told against the background of the desperate lives of refugees illegally living in Paris just prior to the outbreak of World War 2. The book already had been bought for screen adaptation. Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer would be cast in the lead roles.
David the King by Gladys Schmitt: An historical novel about the biblical hero by the head of the creative writing program at Carnegie-Mellon (then known as Carnegie Tech).
The King's General by Daphne DuMaurier: An historical novel set in Cornwall during Cromwell’s civil war by one of the era's most popular writers.
Wasteland by Jo Sinclair: A first novel about a second-generation Jewish family in the Midwest. Winner of the Harper Prize.
The Street by Ann Petry: A first novel about a young woman struggling to build a life in Harlem, written by a young African-American writer. Winner of the Putnam Prize.
NON-FICTION
The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald: A very popular, humorous memoir about MacDonald’s experiences as a young wife on a chicken farm in Washington State. It became a movie starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray and briefly the basis of a TV series in the 1950s. It introduced the characters of Ma and Pa Kettle who inspired a series of low-brow, comic movies about rural life.
One World or None edited by Dexter Masters and Catherine May: An 86-page anthology published by the Federation of American Scientists, formed by members of the Manhattan Project, warning of the dangers of a nuclear world.
Starling of the White House by Col. Edmund Starling: The memoir of a Secret Service man who served in the White House from Wilson to Roosevelt.
The Anatomy of Peace by Emery Reves: An argument in favor of world federalism.
Burma Surgeon Returns by Gordon Seagrave. A follow-up to a popular autobiography, extending the story to Dr. Seagrave’s experiences on the Burma front during the war.