…and this is a 
Two book lists
Category: Books
Posted on: May 19, 2008 11:03 AM, by PZ Myers
I've been sent two lists of "10 Books That Screwed Up the World", and I'm not very impressed with either of them. The first is from a new book by Benjamin Wanker Wiker of the same title, published by Regnery Press, the imprint of right-wing wackaloons everywhere. Here's Wiker's list:
- The Prince, Machiavelli
- Discourse on Method, Descartes
- Leviathan, Hobbes
- Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
- The Descent of Man, Darwin
- Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche
- Mein Kampf, Hitler
- Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead
- Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Kinsey
Here's another list, which seems to be inspired by Wiker's, but with a few substitutions.
- Malleus Maleficarum, Kramer and Sprenger
- Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead
- The Prince, Machiavelli
- Mein Kampf, Hitler
- The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger
- Democracy and Education, Dewey
- Baby and Child Care, Spock
- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
- Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
- Darwin's Black Box, Behe
Bleh. A list of books that screwed up the world ought to include books that have actually had some major impact for the worse on the lives of large numbers of people: I can definitely see that for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, and the Malleus Maleficarum. Others, not so much. Coming of Age in Samoa may have confused the discipline of anthropology for a while, but putting it on the same list as Mein Kampf is simply ridiculous. The work of Marx has been potent and maybe deserves to be on these lists because we're still living with the ideological struggle that it was part of…but really, it ought to include both sides, and Adam Smith's work doesn't seem to be here.
Darwin's book is a science text that describes an empirical reality. To claim that it screwed up the world is like declaring that Newton's Principia, because it described difficult facts, hurt us. It's only on the list because Wiker is a Discovery Institute cretin.
Kinsey is on the list because he makes homophobic wingnuts feel uncomfortably icky. I don't think that making the likes of Benjamin Wiker feel all squirmy in his pants qualifies as screwing up the world.
And Behe? You've got to be kidding. His book is inconsequential noise, error after error larded with silly egotism. It's the work of a popular crackpot; if you're going to include that, then we need to include the works of Velikovsky and Chopra and every astrologer, acupuncturist, homeopathist, quack, and faith healer ever written.
And most damning of all, it is impossible to take these lists seriously when they've left off the works that have been overwhelmingly influential, incredibly widely read, and have led billions of people into delusion and stupidity: the Christian bible and the Koran. Toss in the Book of Mormon and Dianetics and any holy book you can imagine as equally fit for condemnation. Isn't it glaringly obvious that both lists omit any work that is explicitly religious? It's another example of unthinking privilege handed to theological gobbledygook.
Comments
My list would include "Free to Choose" by Milton Friedman and "Supply Side Economics" by Arthur Laffer.
Posted by: Virginia | May 19, 2008 11:09 AM
Geez, if Behe's on the list, the collected works of Sylvia Browne certainly should be.
Posted by: Bryn | May 19, 2008 11:19 AM
Are you implying Kinsey's work was scientific? Wow.
Posted by: Julie | May 19, 2008 11:20 AM
"Atlas Shrugged" and related Rand nonsense "novels".
Any book on phrenology.
Hundreds of papal encyclicals.
Posted by: JJ | May 19, 2008 11:21 AM
Ayn Rand hasn't even been mentioned here. How is that possible? The most egotistical and yet respected by so many person to still be popular. Some even call her a "philosopher". She's frighteningly influential.
Posted by: Jason Williams | May 19, 2008 11:22 AM
The Discovery Institute blogged about this, and I blogged about their blog article (the blogosphere is rather incestuous):
Discovery Institute -- Plagiarism?
Posted by: PatrickHenry | May 19, 2008 11:22 AM
(.)(.)
Posted by: wÒÓ† | May 19, 2008 11:23 AM
Wingnuts usually confuse me, but list has me attempting to scratch my head without being able to locate it in space: exactly how is Discourse on Method detrimental to Truth, Justice, and the American Way?
Posted by: Syl | May 19, 2008 11:24 AM
Isn't it glaringly obvious that both lists omit any work that is explicitly religious?
Der Hexenhammer isn't explicitly religious? Although I must admit it is the height of hypocrisy to list it and not the Bible which laid the foundations for Hammer of the Witches. So we've got:
Malleus Maleficarum, Kramer and Sprenger
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Mein Kampf, Hitler
Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, A. Smith
The Bible
The Quoran
The Book Of Mormon
Dianetics, Hubbard
What for #10?
I nominate Pensées by Pascal. And, honestly, I think Augustine's De doctrina Christiana is far more pernicious then Dianetics (give Hubbard a millennium or so to sink in and it may well be as bad, but not yet).
Posted by: Sarcastro | May 19, 2008 11:25 AM
The number one book has to be the Bible, it's caused more death, destruction and harm to the human race by several orders of magnitude over any other single work in the history of mankind. After that, it really stops being all that important, nothing else can compete in scope, even Mein Kampf comes in as an "also ran".
Posted by: Cephus | May 19, 2008 11:26 AM
You seem to consider Adam Smith as the opposite of Marx.
It is not. In fact, if you read Adam Smith, which is something free market absolutists obviously haven't, you'd find that he's not one of them, and that Marx agreed with him more often than not.
Posted by: NM | May 19, 2008 11:29 AM
Interpretation of Dreams by Freud.
Hal Lindsey's books.
Sartre, and his inspiration, Heidegger.
Of course the Bible and Koran, as well as anything that came from them.
Plato, who I sort of hate to include because he was brilliant, but he also fed us a lot of nonsense that became part of Xianity and Islam.
It's ridiculous to blame Machiavelli for telling it like it is. Same with Nietzsche and Hobbes. Descartes had enough screwy ideas, but had a lot of good ones as well. Descent of Man is not Darwin's best, yet not close to being worthy of being on such a list.
Communist Manifesto, yes, though "book" seems to be in question. And, are the Protocols really a book? Hitler sucks, of course.
Behe, forgotten in a decade or two, foiled at every turn. Bizarre to even think of his derivative junk for such a list. Dewey's not that bad. Mead, questionable, since I think it was one of those books so wrong only intellectuals could believe it--and then only for a few decades.
The lists are terrible. I'm sure that some highly influential and very bad, now forgotten, books could have been dredged up to make a real list.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 19, 2008 11:35 AM
The Bible is missing from those lists
Posted by: me | May 19, 2008 11:35 AM
We need to include some woo on the list, i.e. Capra's The Tao of Physics or Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters (or anything by Deepak Chopra).
Posted by: Sonja | May 19, 2008 11:36 AM
Would someone care to explain why Adam Smith is there? I was under the impression that it kickstarted a lot of empirical work.
Posted by: bill r | May 19, 2008 11:37 AM
Not sure if this qualifies as "book", but how about the Prophecies of Nostradamus?
That crap still gets confused for "real"...
Posted by: Mike K | May 19, 2008 11:40 AM
I am woefully uneducated. I know that Socrates and Plato each put forward the idea that the world around us is not the "real" world, that our senses don't "really" tell us anything important, and that to find Truth you have to look... in your heart. However, I don't know whether any particular work promotes this idea MORE than any of their others. Because of this, I can't give a title, and instead have to just suggest "the works of Socrates and Plato" as an entry to the list.
Posted by: mjfgates | May 19, 2008 11:41 AM
The Late Great Planet Earth? Best selling book of the 70s and eventually led to Left Behind. They themselves have been a horrible torture of literature.
Posted by: Dennis N | May 19, 2008 11:42 AM
What? The Prince? It seems that you fuck the world up only when you say the glaring truth.
Seriously, that book didn't impress me. It was just a big "D'UH." to me.
Posted by: Michelle | May 19, 2008 11:43 AM
What, no Copernicus (or Bruno or Galileo)?
I was out of town for the weekend, and in the pile of mail waiting for me when I got home last night was a bulk mail brochure that appears to be promoting a return to geocentric cosmology! The headline of the piece is Have the Scientists Been Wrong for 400 Years?? I haven't studied it yet to determine whether it's some sort of joke, and I'm actually afraid to: If it's not a joke, I shudder to think how many times I'll need to bash my head against the wall.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | May 19, 2008 11:45 AM
Is it really right to include Marx, and not the odd Hegelian ideas that led to Marx?
How about Mao's rancid writings? I can't even name any without looking them up, but they sure screwed up China for decades. Quotations by Mao should be included in any real list. Lenin's writings, and anything by Stalin, would be worth considering.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 19, 2008 11:46 AM
The Secret
Posted by: Dennis N | May 19, 2008 11:47 AM
PZ, if you really think that the only reason that Marx deserves ("maybe") to be on such a list is because "we're still living with the ideological struggle that it was part of", you really need to get out more...
And why exactly do you think that Adam Smith deserves serious consideration on a list of the top things that "screwed up the world"? As others have pointed out, one shouldn't be faulted for telling it like it is, especially when doing so helps overthrow centuries of truly dangerous myths and misconceptions that had caused untold amounts of misery.
Posted by: Ichneumon | May 19, 2008 11:48 AM
Including "Mein Kampf" just shows the author never tried to read it. It a incoherent rambling that no one actually read. Yes, the ideas and the man behind it screwed the world over, but the book itself has the propagating power of wet cheese.
Posted by: flynn | May 19, 2008 11:50 AM
Mao's Red Book?
Posted by: alex | May 19, 2008 11:52 AM
Gee, my choice would have included any of the Garfield anthologies. That cartoon cat has got to be one of the most evil creations to ever spring from a writer's brain. The insipidness of it burns the psyche. Irreparably.
Posted by: Mark B | May 19, 2008 11:54 AM
#1 The Book of Bunny Suicides - Have you ever considered what a literal Screwed up World would look like? It would probably look like a stereotypical devils head...
Posted by: Jubes | May 19, 2008 11:54 AM
#17
woefully uneducated indeed. try actually *reading* some of Plato's dialogues about Socrates--you are in for a wonderful treat.
They are full of the spirit of rational inquiry and joyful attacks on dogmatic nonsense. Yes, Plato propounded some dogmatic nonsense of his own now and then, but he generally arrived at it by honest if mistaken means: by trying to provide *arguments* about what follows from what; by examining *evidence* and seeing what it entails and what it contradicts; and by proposing *hypotheses* that attempt to explain and systematize as many of the natural phenomena as possible. He also earns points for having promoted the role of mathematics in natural science.
if you read nothing else, read the Euthyphro. it contains a classic exposition of the dilemma for theists who think that god creates the moral ordering by arbitrary fiat. plato is our eternal ally in the fight against the stupid theistic line that only god can provide a foundation for morality.
sure, there are offensive and wrong-headed bits in plato--it's a mistake to defer to him as an authority. (he's not the gospel--but then, neither is the gospel). but the ferment of ideas, the constant questioning, the exploration of possibilities, and the rational working out of consistent positions, all make him an inspiration to rational thinkers of all times. it's not for nothing that he was revered by the renaissance.
i'd also speak in defense of adam smith's 'wealth of nations', which, as noted above, is nothing like the right-wing screed it is thought to be. 'the theory of moral sentiments' is also very good.
but to add a few:
mao's little red book.
and for anti-intellectual, anti-scientific bunkum, i'd put pirzig's "zen & the art etc." right up there with ayn rand.
Posted by: kid bitzer | May 19, 2008 11:55 AM
THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY by Robert James Waller deserves inclusion.
Posted by: Nomi | May 19, 2008 11:58 AM
I think that some books deserve to be called "death warrants." I define a death warrant as a book or tract that provides a rational for mass murder, and this is its primary significance. (Otherwise, the holy books of all major faiths would qualify.) While I have only seen the term used for Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most famous death warrant is Mein Kampf.
- Malleus Maleficarum by Kramer and Sprenger
- On the Jews and Their Lies by Martin Luther
- The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels
- Milestones by Sayyid Qutb (inspiration to Zawahiri and modern militant Islamism in general)
- Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene by Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/documentary/hadamar/racism.html
This last book is quite obscure today, but it deserves more notoriety.
The Oral History of the Human Genetics Project (a John Hopkins & UCLA project) describes the book as "the bible of human genetics instruction in Europe and the U.S., as well as the handbook to the Nazi eugenics program." The German book went through several editions from 1921 to 1941, including a 1931 American edition which received mainly good reviews in US science journals.
The book was read by Adolf Hitler while serving his prison sentence for the Beer Hall Putsch, and it made a profound impression on him. Lenz, who became a Nazi Party member and served as Germany's first professor of racial hygiene (Robert Proctor, 'Racial Hygiene'), boasted that one of his earlier papers prefigured National Socialist policy. Lenz made his early reputation studying mixed race German-Africans in the Namibian colony. Fischer was one of the mentors of Josef Mengele.
A local library has a copy of Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene, which I studied. My notes on the book:
Baur explains that hindrances to natural selection are injurious to human genetic quality; such weakening of selection occurs under conditions of civilization.
Lenz asserts that German-African "half-breeds" are inferior to "negroes." Only the worst representatives of each race would mate and marry across racial lines.
Lenz's 'Near Eastern race' includes Jews, Greeks, and Armenians. Lenz writes that they excel in the control of their fellow man rather than the control over nature and so are very proficient in commerce. According to Lenz, Near Easterners are adept at understanding the emotions of others, which can be used to sadistically enjoy their suffering. Lenz cites Shakespeare's Shylock as an example. Lenz observes that many Jews resemble non-Jewish Europeans, so he concludes that Jews are a race (within the Near Eastern race) defined more by mental than by physical attributes.
Despite their high intellects, Lenz asserts that Near Easterners are inferior to "Nordics" in imagination and creativity. He believes that all great world empires were founded by Nordics.
Lenz warns that civilized people are "squandering" their biological heritage that has given rise to their mental abilities.
Fritz Lenz quotes from Human Heredity:
"race ... is the first and indispensable condition of all civilization."
"Our ethnological studies must lead us, not to arrogance, but to action, to eugenics."
I think that what made Human Heredity so noxious was not that it was extreme by the standards of racist and eugenicist tracts of the time - it was not - but that it was so respected by the scientific community. It helped give Nazi ideology a scientific aura, allowing German doctors and biologists to believe that they were following a rational and benevolent program. The first biomedical implementation of a mass murder operation in Nazi Germany was of the handicapped, those whom the soft conditions of civilization had allowed to live.
Posted by: Colugo | May 19, 2008 12:04 PM
I would hesitate to put every holy book in the same list. The Tao Te Ching is pretty benign, as far as those things go. Confucious's works might fit as well, although I have not read them.
But yes, as I was wincing my way down that first list, I kept wondering where the Bible was as well.
Posted by: Opisthokont | May 19, 2008 12:07 PM
What? No Dan Brown?
(Sorry.)
I can't take a list like this seriously if it doesn't have Mao's Red Book, the Bible and the Koran. Those three books seem to have pretty much maximized their potential, and I mean that in the worst possible way.
Posted by: MikeM | May 19, 2008 12:16 PM
Books don't kill people, people kill people.
Posted by: Jams | May 19, 2008 12:23 PM
NM @11,
absolutely. Smith didn't say what a lot of wingnuts think he said (which is "[Insert most recent nonsensical and self-serving Republican talking point about the economy HERE]"). If nothing else, he was no fan of corporations.
Machiavelli's inclusion I find interesting, because wingnut intellectuals (at least, those of Straussian persuasion) loves them some Niccolò M. Of course, it would be perfectly consistent with their beliefs for them to revere The Prince and at the same time approve of their downmarket noisemaker comrades warning Cletus and Brandine that the book is Dangerous and Bad.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton | May 19, 2008 12:28 PM
Clearly, you don't remember the Great Ravenous Book Rampage of aught-three. . . .
Posted by: Blake Stacey | May 19, 2008 12:28 PM
Karl Marx would have been horrified to see Communism tried out in places without a long tradition of democratic capitalism; he was hoping that the UK would be the first post-capitalist state. The whole frickin' point of Capital (to use the English translation of the title) is that societies evolve in stages from feudalism to capitalism to socialism or communism. It doesn't work to leapfrog from feudalism to socialism.
Meanwhile, as for truly evil books that have seriously damaged the public discourse in the US and thus had a negative effect on the world, I suggest the two books published under William E. Simon's name: A Time for Truth in 1978 (ghostwritten by libertarian author Edith Efron) and A Time for Action in 1980. Together these books laid out the moneyed and corporate conservatives' game plan for taking over the parts of American society concerned with defining objective reality: Think tanks, colleges, and the media.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | May 19, 2008 12:30 PM
Dewey? Subversive? Screwed up the world? You've gotta be kidding me. Hard to read, exceptionally difficult to interpret, and probably misguided, but screwed up the world? No.
Posted by: Eric | May 19, 2008 12:32 PM
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
WTF? This isn't even a real book, why is it on a list of books?
Posted by: Joel | May 19, 2008 12:33 PM
I am surprised these yahoos didn't put books on feminism on their list.
Posted by: michaelf | May 19, 2008 12:39 PM
@ #35 Phoenix Woman
I agree with you on the communism issue. It always confused me that, far as I can tell, communist revolutions always seem to spring up in agrarian feudal societies instead of industrialized capitalist states, which seemed to be what Karl Marx had in mind.
Posted by: spgreenlaw | May 19, 2008 12:39 PM
Bill Moyers mentions the work of William Simon here:
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | May 19, 2008 12:39 PM
A lot of my problem with making lists like this is there's no control -- for example, how do we know that creation/popularizing of a book that justifies 'the path of what we wanted to do anyway' is what screwed up humanity, rather than a symptom. (In other words, if we ran history again for a number of times, half with the individual book being written/compiled/promoted and half without, would the worlds without just find other excuses to justify atrocities?) I know, I know -- damn scientists and their need for controls. (For that matter, I'm an astronomer -- I should be used to trying to find what controls I can in my data.)
About the only thing I can say is that, while a book advancing ideals and philosophies might have a detrimental effect on society, a book stating observations shouldn't. So the one thing that most certainly shouldn't be on that list is Darwin's work.
Posted by: Rebecca Harbison | May 19, 2008 12:42 PM
The Turner Diaries
Posted by: Dennis N | May 19, 2008 12:43 PM
@ #4
I came in to say exactly the same thing. People who embrace Rand's pseudo-intellectual justification of adolescent narcissism and join this growing army of irrational anarcho-capitalist libertarians are becoming a big problem.
Posted by: Ryan Cunningham | May 19, 2008 12:50 PM
Books do not screw up the world. Uncritical minds attached to hyperactive bodies screw up the world. While there may be
such a thing as a "bad" book the real problem is bad readers.
Posted by: fyreflye | May 19, 2008 12:50 PM
Whichever book of Aristotle's that first pushed teleology deserves a bit of a kicking. Nothing lets off bad behaviour - an Inquisition or a purge there - like saying putting things towards final purpose - the Kingdom of God, historically inevitable communism.
Other than the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" I don't think there is anything much very damaging in the Communist Manifesto (I don't know about Marx's other work) other than firmly selling a teleological view of history. I think Aristotle should take precedence because he added the teleology to Abrahamaic religion as well as Hegel and Marx and their followers.
Posted by: Matt Heath | May 19, 2008 12:53 PM
Left Behind
Posted by: Etha Williams | May 19, 2008 12:55 PM
That cartoon cat has got to be one of the most evil creations to ever spring from a writer's brain.
Have you tried "Garfield Minus Garfield?"
It's the daily Garfield with Garfield carefully removed. It becomes the story of Jon Arbuckle, a lonely, depressed man who talks to himself.
http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
Posted by: Quiet Desperation | May 19, 2008 12:56 PM
One point that is usually missed when discussing Machiavelli: because a lot of people get a sample of it in High School and think "oooh this is the template for how to be a bad guy", they think it's cool and worse, that Machiavelli advocated the policies in it.
He didn't.
The book was intended as a satire of the stuff he saw all the rotten princelings around him doing all the time. Ask any serious historian and they will tell you: if you want to know what Machiavelli really thought, forget "The Prince", read "The Discourses"!
(Incidentally a lot of this is also true of "The Book of 5 Rings", by Miyamoto Musashi. People read that trying to figure out Japan and imagine that this is what all samurai were like, super honorable etc. This book was written by the crotchety old bastard Musashi bitching about how worthless the kids were these days. "Bah! Back in my day we'd slit our bellies every day before breakfast! These rotten kids today are lucky to slit their bellies once a month! What slackers! Get offa my lawn!!!")
Posted by: Rheinhard | May 19, 2008 12:56 PM
There is a of course an obvious difficulty picking 'books that screwed up the world'. In many instances, lots of people who never actually read the specific book in question used it to justify all sorts of evil shit.
'
Adam Smith is a good example. 'Wealth of Nations' is actually pretty good, but has been misappropriated down to a single false bullet-point which isn't actually in the book, to the harm of many.
Then there are books like the Bible, which contain mounds of bad stuff along with some contradictory good things... and the people who screw up the world saying they are following the bible by-and-large are just cherry-picking for post-hoc justification.
Posted by: travc | May 19, 2008 12:57 PM
I'd amend that to say
Posted by: Dennis N | May 19, 2008 1:00 PM
Have to agree with Mrs Tilton on Smith.
Smith was more describing things than expounding a philosophy.
Machiavelli is possibly one of the least understood and second most-often misquoted author ever, behind Smith.
As for "books that have screwed up the world" I would point at most of the texts of the Abrahamic traditions, not because of their content, but because of those who have held them up in the air and commanded injustice, war and atrocity by athority of those books, and the deity they purport to represent.
Posted by: DLC | May 19, 2008 1:00 PM
@37: I'm not sure what you mean. There was a text published and circulated under that name that was a fake -- but it was the hoax that caused the damage by lending some kind of credence to the antisemitism of the time.
Posted by: iwdw | May 19, 2008 1:01 PM
I'd object to Smith being on there just as much as I would Darwin. Smith's ideas were perceptive and largely descriptive, and he was hardly a man that advocated rapaciousness in capitalism. Anyone who thinks they know what he's about just given general knowledge of his economic ideas should read his "Theory of Moral Sentiments" to get a better sense of him.
Posted by: Bad | May 19, 2008 1:04 PM
What? No Dan Brown?
Piffle. The DaVinci Code made people openly talk about church conspiracies and even suggest that the church might be (GASP!) lying to them. Gawds, all the churches in my area were having meetings (with big banners announcing them) to discuss (defend against and refute) a work of fiction. It was hilarious. Thank you, Dan Brown!
Angels & Demons had a high ranking member of the Vatican attempting to detonate an antimatter bomb to start a holy war. And it had ambigrams, which make anything cool.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Ambigram_rotating.gif
That's all a net positive in my, er... book.
Posted by: Quiet Desperation | May 19, 2008 1:05 PM
Interesting that "Descent of Man" is on their list while "Origin of Species" is not. It seems to me to indicate that the fundamental source of their objection to evolution (if this were not already obvious) lies in a myopic, childish fit of wounded pride.
Posted by: amphiox | May 19, 2008 1:05 PM
Just the premise that books (the Bible included) can "screw up the world" is unquenchably idiotic.
People and movements screw up the world. Books can't do anything but record what they think.
Posted by: unicow | May 19, 2008 1:06 PM
it is impossible to take these lists seriously when they've left off the works that have been overwhelmingly influential, incredibly widely read, and have led billions of people into delusion and stupidity
Speaking of which, how about the following works of "delusion" and "stupidity"?
Earth in the Balance, by a certain former Vice-president of the United States of America.
The Population Bomb, by Ehrlich, another tome of doomsday prophecies that manifestly failed to materialize.
Anything by Michael "Sicko" Moore (kind of a lifetime achievement award).
I would also include Al Franken, except that I don't think anyone with a brain takes Al seriously.
Posted by: Global Warming Is A Scam | May 19, 2008 1:11 PM
My Pet Goat.
It paralyzed the leader of the free world and apparently caused enough brain damage to make the invasion of Iraq seem like a good idea. Now the whole world suffers.
Damn that evil tome.
Posted by: Richard | May 19, 2008 1:14 PM
"People and movements screw up the world. Books can't do anything but record what they think." - unicow
Well, yeah, books only screw up the world so far as they kill trees and create land-fill, but you have to admit, books have helped spread the ideas that galvanize the movements that screw up the world. The book is a powerful technological advancement. It amplifies voices and restrains the ever mischievous broken telephone. It's much more than an archival technology.
Posted by: Jams | May 19, 2008 1:20 PM
I'm surprised the lists leave out Rousseau and Freud--and for that matter Silent Spring.
I'd include the Bible but leave out the Book of Mormon, since the wackiest Mormon theology comes from later stuff. (The anti-black racism is in Pearl of Great Price and the polygamy is in Doctrine and Covenants.)
Posted by: Eveningsun | May 19, 2008 1:20 PM
Hmmm... since he's spent most of his adult life as a comedian, and all of his political books have been satirical, I wonder if this is even really an insult?
But seriously, folks... I take Franken seriously. If you listened to even a little bit of his Air America show and still don't take Franken seriously, I don't see how I can take you seriously.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | May 19, 2008 1:22 PM
Y'know, it always astounds me when people list Marx's work as evil or negative in terms of impact. I mean, Groucho and Me wasn't Moby Dick or anything, but it doesn't deserve the villification I'm seeing...
What?
...
Nevermind.
Posted by: Ranson | May 19, 2008 1:23 PM
I read the cover flap of the Wiker book at Borders the other day; he's got more than ten, but I can't recall what the others were. His point with The Descent of Man is that it allegedly shows that Darwin was a racist who advocated eugenics and Social Darwinism as a proactive philosophy. My reactions were, in order, "I doubt that" and "so what if he did?" Somehow, I doubt either of those concerns would be effectively answered in the text.
Posted by: Tom Foss | May 19, 2008 1:25 PM
Just as a misreading of Darwin has brought out innumerable falsehoods about evolution by religious nuts, misreading of Smith has brought out the same kind of wingnuttery.
And there certainly is some evidence that Darwin derived some of his thoughts from Smith via Malthus.
Posted by: natural cynic | May 19, 2008 1:27 PM
Darwin is one of the greatest scientists ever, and no book of his should be on the index of malign texts. The Descent of Man is a landmark in the advance of human knowledge and was well ahead of its time in a number of respects. Yet it is not just a work of objective observation and brilliant theoretical speculation but is also unfortunately in some respects a continuation of the intellectual tradition of Blumenbach, Gobineau, and Knox. Intellectual history is a mixed bag.
Darwin, Introduction to The Descent of Man, 1871:
Ernst Haeckel "has recently ...published his Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, in which he fully discusses the genealogy of man. If this work had appeared before my essay had been written, I should probably never have completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have arrived I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine."
Darwin defers to the authority of Ernst Haeckel on the subject of human evolution.
Robert J. Richards, U of Chicago Haeckel scholar: "Ernst Haeckel's popular book Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Natural history of creation, 1868) represents human species in a hierarchy, from lowest (Papuan and Hottentot) to highest (Caucasian, including the Indo-German and Semitic races)."
Darwin, The Descent of Man:
"The belief that there exists in man some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls of savage and civilised races, of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series."
"The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation, and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual, faculties."
Posted by: Colugo | May 19, 2008 1:27 PM
Man, these people need to wise up.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is way more important then Beyond Good and Evil.
Das Capital lays out the Socialist Economic theory better then the Communist Manifesto.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by Keynes is a much better 'opposite' to Marx's Das Capital and Manifesto.
Posted by: Brendan S | May 19, 2008 1:27 PM
Global Warming Is A Scam, it's considered good taste to effect a veneer of legitimacy before trolling a thread.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | May 19, 2008 1:30 PM
Dennis N #50:
Yes, your version is much better.
Posted by: travc | May 19, 2008 1:33 PM
I'm also sure that I speak for everyone here when I say that I didn't actually start eating babies until I read "Discourse on Method".
Posted by: Dustin | May 19, 2008 1:36 PM
People who put The Prince on these lists almost certainly haven't read it. Similarly, from a Regnery writer's perspective, why include Leviathan but not Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding or Dialogues on Natural Religion, which have surely created more atheists than any other works, the Bible apart?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | May 19, 2008 1:39 PM
Isn't it glaringly obvious that principle of these lists is not "Books that screwed up the world" but "Books that stand in as a label for people or ideas I oppose".
Also, there was no book "My Pet Goat". There was a story called "The Pet Goat" contained in a reading textbook the Great Leader was reading.
Posted by: PeteC | May 19, 2008 1:39 PM
@59
Certainly, books can help get ideas to people who otherwise may not have heard them. And they do a good job of getting things across without the "broken telephone" effect.
Still, I find it difficult to believe that any book is powerful enough to prompt action on its own. Books can be used by give voice to movements and help further their goals, but a book isn't going to cause a movement all by itself. Or at least I can't think of any that have.
Then again, I'm probably just picking nits because the lists are so dumb.
Posted by: unicow | May 19, 2008 1:40 PM
Purely for symbolic reasons, I'd certainly put a few books by Irving Kristol on top of my list ;
"Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea" 1995
"Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead" 1983
"Two Cheers for Capitalism" 1978
Knowing how many people in the present administration have been influenced by these books, they for sure come up close in the category of screwing the world...
Posted by: negentropyeater | May 19, 2008 1:41 PM
I don't think it matters how much effect books have overall on people, since we're comparing books to books. Obviously, books don't trump, and are not the sole cause, of actions. But we're not comparing actions with books, so it's all relative.
Posted by: Dennis N | May 19, 2008 1:44 PM
I agree Machiavelli is pretty misunderstood. Not a big fan either, but the Prince was not all that evil. It made itself clear that it was meant for a ruler to be able to keep his land well maintained (it's called The freaking Prince!). It never even suggested "ends justify the means," for anyone else as far as I remember. Even if it wasn't a satire (as someone else mentioned), it was pretty clear that he thought you need to be a douchebag to run a land, which is what rulers still do nowadays anyway.
Posted by: andyo | May 19, 2008 1:45 PM
What about the nam-shub of Enki?
If there was a sizable crossover of right-wingnuts and people who have read Snowcrash, I think they would certainly put it on the list. (The distinction between fiction and history being no obstacle to them of course.) ;)
Posted by: travc | May 19, 2008 1:48 PM
"You want to know what the worst book ever written ever was?"
"What?"
"Football: It's a Funny Old Game" by Andrew John."
-Norman Lovett & Craig Charles
Posted by: Colwyn Abernathy | May 19, 2008 1:48 PM
People suggesting that the Quran should be on this list (I know this is a silly game, but lets play along) may need to rethink. I think books that cannot do their work without a whole organized movement and a supporting cast of explanatory commentaries should not be included. Thus, Syed Qutb's "in the shade of the quran" or Maudoodi's famous commentaries on the Quran are much more responsible for modern islamist violence than the Quran itself...If you to read the book (by itself, with no commentary or explanation), its hard to see how it leads to Islamism as currently understood..or to any other coherent system, good or bad. Its poetic (in places), elliptical, repetitive and extremely short on specifics. You are told 700 times (literally, people have counted) that you must pray the salat prayers, but not even once are you told how the prayer is to be done and what you say in the course of the prayer. The same for most of the other standard islamic practices. There are some exceptions, for example, the rules of inheritance are described in some detail in one spot, a short list of bad things (wine, gambling, idols, sorcery, fortune telling) pops up occasionally, we are told to cut off hands and feet on alternate sides on those who "make mischief in the land" (or make lists of evil books?), there is a suggestion that you beat your wives if they disobey you, though that one has recently been challenged by ingenious feminist translators armed with flexible dictionaries. But really, the whole fascist edifice of Islamism has been built on a list of "great books" (the canon?) that are mostly commentaries on the quran and suchlike, not directly on the text of the Quran. Its a minor quibble, but there is a point in this somewhere.....
Posted by: omar ali | May 19, 2008 1:50 PM
Global Warming Is A Scam, it's considered good taste to effect a veneer of legitimacy before trolling a thread.
You mean, concern trolling, as in what you're doing now?
Just wondering.
Posted by: Global Warming Is A Scam | May 19, 2008 1:50 PM
IIRC the Prince was written mostly from a prison cell, as a big suck up to get out... which worked.
Posted by: travc | May 19, 2008 1:51 PM
A scam? A scam is something done by a business. If I recall, businesses are the ones denying global warming so they can keep making profits while pumping out carbon. As a helpful suggestion, I think you should change it to "conspiracy". Then look up The Question.
Posted by: Dennis N | May 19, 2008 1:54 PM
Wingnuts usually confuse me, but list has me attempting to scratch my head without being able to locate it in space: exactly how is Discourse on Method detrimental to Truth, Justice, and the American Way?
Books aren't on his list (or ours either) because of the book itself but as a representative of a hat