“The spat was just a sideshow. The shouting match between the liberal satirist Al Franken and the conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly captured on ‘Book TV’ this summer generated lots of headlines. But these days the toughest ideological warfare is playing out off camera, on the New York Times best-seller list.

For the first time in recent memory, The Times‘s list, the nation’s most influential barometer of book sales, is pitting liberals and conservatives against each other in roughly equal numbers, ending what some publishing executives say is nearly a decade of dominance by right-wing authors.

…Publishing executives offer several explanations for the about-face: growing dissatisfaction with the Bush administration, newfound liberal savvy about how to use television and radio for self-promotion, even a sudden loss of inhibition by the left.” —NY Times