If the conversation around “adulting” hits a nerve, meet Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska.

Sasse is concerned with what he regards as the slow-to-nonexistent development of independent and thriving adults in the US and has written a book on the subject, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis–and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). It is zooming up the Amazon rankings, thanks to his appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday and CBS This Morning today, moving from #43 to #7.

He tells Face the Nation‘s John Dickerson, “this book is 100 percent not about politics, and it’s 99 percent not about policy. It’s about this new category of perpetual adolescence.”  However, as one of the Republicans who expressed reservations about the firing of James Comey as Director of the FBI, that subject dominates the  interview. Sasse finally gets to promote the book towards the end, saying it’s about the recent phenomenon of  “perpetual adolescence …Peter Pan’s Neverland is a hell … we don’t want [to] have our kids caught at a place where they’re not learning how to be adults.”

He followed up with an appearance on CBS This Morning, which also focused on the firing of Comey.

Sasse is making the media rounds. He is scheduled to appear tonight on Late Night with Seth Meyers. He has been on NPR’s On Point, the NYT has an interview, Sasse himself writes an essay for the Wall Street Journal (subscription maybe required), MarketWatch offers a summary, and Time covers it in an article titled “Ben Sasse Explains Why His New Book Is Really, Truly Not About Running for President.”

The Nigerian-born novelist and feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of the novels Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun, is on the bestseller lists again. Her short nonfiction guide to raising children, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (PRH/Knopf; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample), just landed at #4 on the NYT Nonfiction bestseller list.

The author is profiled by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. She tells the Post that she wrote the book “to help create the world my daughter will love.”

She was recently been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, saying that girls are raised to be likable. forcing them to “mold and shape what [they] do and say based on what [they] imagine the other person wants to hear.”

The Guardian writes “In the new book, Adichie’s advice is not only to provide children with alternatives – to empower boys and girls to understand there is no single way to be – but also to understand that the only universal in this world is difference. In terms of the evolution of feminism, these are not new lessons, but that is rather Adichie’s point. She is not writing for other feminist writers.”

A book on an ever-popular topic is rising on Amazon as a result of coverage from NPR and spotlights in the NYT and The Atlantic.

Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why by Paul Tough (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; OverDrive Sample), a book about teaching and parenting kids for success, has broken into the top 50, rising from #796.

His earlier book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, And The Hidden Power Of Character, was a NYT bestseller and, as NPR says, “probably did more than any other single book to get the wider public thinking about the importance of grit and other noncognitive skills.”

Many libraries we checked have yet to order, perhaps because the only trade review thus far is from Kirkus.

Time to get those orders in. The book’s title alone will bring eager parents and, as NPR puts it, “for the past decade or more Tough has been one of the pre-eminent reporters translating education research for public consumption.” It’s likely to join another book on best seller lists, Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success by Angela Duckworth, (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio), currently tied at #2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction list with Anderson Cooper’s The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss, (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe).