Amazon's Best of 2010

Amazon has announced their Best of 2010 list, and a business book cracked the top 10 overall choices. Michael Lewis's The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine barely did so, coming in at number 10. (Two other books in the top ten that may appeal to nonfiction readers are The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, which came in at numbers one and five respectively.)

As they've done in previous years, Amazon has broken the books into separate categories and listed their editors' picks next to the customer favorites. I always enjoy seeing the differences between what editors choose and customers vote for with their pocket books. And I would enjoy it more if I were Michael Lewis, who topped both lists in the Business and Investing category.

The customer favorites were:

• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Broadway Business
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink, Riverhead
• Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, Crown Business
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin, Portfolio
• The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey, Thomas Nelson Publishers
• On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry M. Paulson, Business Plus
• Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today's Profit and Drives Tomorrow's Growth by Inder Sidhu, FT Press
• 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown by Simon Johnson & James Kwak, Pantheon Books

The editors' picks were:

• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath, Broadway Business
• The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu, Knopf Publishing Group
• Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, Riverhead
• Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan, Princeton University Press
• No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller by Harry Markopolos, John Wiley & Sons
• The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely, Harper
• When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by Jerry Weintraub, Twelve
• Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West by Stephen Fried, Bantam

If you're interested in what's been listed in the past, I've linked to our post from previous years below. Best of 2009 | Best of 2008 | Best of 2007 | Best of 2006 | Best of 2005 | Best of 2004