What non-religious book of international scope would you place in hotels ?
I was surprised when I first saw bibles in hotels. I think of them as propaganda for a religion.
Personally I believe that many more people would rather read a few pages of The adventures of Tintin or some short stories.
The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright.
Something from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series? People don’t go to hotels to be preached at, but they do go to the bathroom. And if they like whatever book you put there they’ll probably take it away with them so why not pick a book people won’t want to share with strangers anyway?
Samuel Delany’s Hogg.
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
Penthouse.
Yellow Pages
Hey, I share my Bathroom Readers. (Admittedly not with strangers, but no stranger’s ever asked).
Other than that, I totally agree.
I’d put a book there that would help people fall asleep…something like G.W.F. Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Mind”.
30 seconds of that and you are under.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy might be useful.
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Boecker.
I actually like this idea.
But you all are missing the most obvious answer.
Origin of Species
+1.
the life and times of the incumbent president. either that or george washinton’s.
One of the Mafalda collections… chained to the table so people don’t take it home. If they want a copy, we’ll be happy to sell them one!
For people who don’t speakee Spanish we’ll offer Asterix - they can choose between their language’s version of Asterix a l’Hispanie or, if available, the one where Asterix visits their own country 
Mafalda: a newspaper strip series from Argentina which was published for 10 years, rescued a couple of times for special events such as a book for UNICEF, and which is very popular among Hispanics and therefore often used as conversational shorthand. I like Quino’s other work, but Mafalda is… special. “The finger is his”; “sexy truck”; “got no time, BOOM!”; “the mother of the farmer!”; “he’s the kind of dude who falls down and does like Guille” are meaningless to people who haven’t read that jewel of literature, but speak volumes to those who have.
**CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys
Red Cross First Aid and Emergency Preparedness Guide**
http://www.redcrossstore.org/Shopper/Product.aspx?UniqueItemId=12
Does a hotel really want to encourage people to be doing chemistry or physics in their rooms?
The CRC “Bible” doesn’t actually do that. It just tells you the Facts of LIfe – melting points, boiling points, ionization potentials, X-ray lines. You know, the important stuff.
I think propaganda (or at least marketing) is kind of a criteria for distributing free books to almost every hotel and motel in the country. If the hotels had to pay for them (rather than a group like the with an agenda like the Gideons) I don’t think very many rooms would be provided with any kind of reading material.
So if we assume that whatever reading material is going to have to be provided to the hotels for free, I propose that comic book companies include hotels and motels when they ship out their comics for “Free Comic Book Day.”