The Slow-Fact Almanac Becomes an Unlikely Bestseller

LISBON — The season's improbable publishing success is a plain almanac — a bound compilation of the year's measured quantities, each with a page of context and nothing more: the anomaly at +2.8 degrees, fusion near a third of the grid, augmented humans past five percent of the population, longevity edging toward a hundred and twenty years. It carries no argument and no forecast. It has, to its own compilers' surprise, become a bestseller across a dozen cities. "People are exhausted by being frightened and starved of being informed," said the volume's editor, presenting it at a Lisbon reading. "We gave them the numbers with room to breathe around each one, and it turns out that is what they wanted." Readers describe the book as oddly calming — a way to hold the era's large slow facts, from the ice to the migrant corridors, without the adrenaline of a headline. Cultural critics have called it the anti-crisis book of the year. Its editor is more modest: "It is a table of contents for a difficult decade. That is all a table does — it holds things up."