The category of the best-seller has attracted increased scholarly attention in the wake of greater interest in popular culture and popular practices of all kinds. During the last few decades, historians, literary critics, and sociologists have been applying their different questions and different perspectives to a wide variety of popular literature. 2 While many have focused on a specific genre, some writers have explored the social significance of best-sellers in general. They have turned to these books for clues about a group’s culture, or they try to discover why particular books resonate with so many people at a particular time. Related to this, by examining how readers approach best-sellers as well as critics’ reactions to these books, researchers hope to better understand the place of popular literature in society and in readers’ lives. 3