Books about democracy, dystopia, tyranny, feminism and far-right politics rapidly climbed bestseller charts in the wake of Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, set in a totalitarian society in which women are forced to reproduce, moved up more than 400 places, and is currently third in the US Amazon Best Sellers chart.
On Tyranny by historian Timothy Snyder now sits at spot eight, after climbing hundreds of places over the past day. Readers are also turning to George Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four, which has moved up to 16th place.
Democracy in Retrograde by Sami Sage and Emily Amick is near the top of the Movers and Shakers chart – which ranks the books with the largest sales increases over the past 24 hours – after the book saw a more than 30,000% boost in sales.
Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me is also among the biggest gainers, having climbed more than 40,000 places over the past day. The 2014 collection of feminist essays now sits in the mid-300s on the bestseller chart.
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Writing on the election in a Guardian column published on Thursday, Solnit said that “our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler.”
Defectors by Paola Ramos, about the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, has moved up thousands of places since Trump emerged as the winner. The 2024 election saw him making significant gains with Latino voters, particularly men.
The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, has also experienced a spike in sales. “Despair is not an option,” Atwood wrote in a post on X following the election result. “It helps no one.”
Men Who Hate Women – a book about misogyny and the radicalisation of young men online – by British writer Laura Bates is also trending. Trump won nearly half of young men, according to exit polls.
A memoir by Kamala Harris, The Truths We Hold, has climbed nearly 2,000 places over the past day – to spot 345 in the Best Sellers chart. Meanwhile memoirs by Melania Trump and JD Vance remain popular, with the incoming first lady’s book sitting at the top of the chart, and the vice president-elect’s Hillbilly Elegy at No 7.
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