Most harmful books of the 19th & 20th centuries

San Antonio Express-News ^ | 01/14/2010 | Source: www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=7591

[Responsibility2nd]

1. "The Communist Manifesto" (Marx and Engels)

2. "Mein Kampf" (Hitler)

3. "Quotations from Chairman Mao" (Mao)

4. "The Kinsey Report" (Kinsey)

5. "Democracy and Education" (Dewey)

6. "Das Kapital" (Marx)

7. "The Feminine Mystique" (Friedan)

8. "The Course of Positive Philosophy" (Comte)

9. "Beyond Good and Evil" (Nietzsche)

10. "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" (Keynes)

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"Catcher in the Rye"

The basic thesis of this book is that to grow up is to become a phoney, so whatever you do don't grow up.

[IrishCatholic]

Bookmark.
I guess the Koran/Qur’an doesn't count. But its effects are. Just imagine if oil wasn't found in the Middle East but in, say, Greenland how history would be different.

[denydenydeny]

The list is a bit stodgy. I think any top ten must include Frantz Fanon’s enormously influential The Wretched of the Earth, a book that made calls for genocide politically acceptable.

I would also include at least one work of Islamic fundamentalism, probably Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.

[dinoparty]

Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States,

by Charles Beard.

[paulycy]

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

All three of your choices are the misbegotten offspring of Silent Spring which absolutely deserves to be in the top ten, maybe number four. This psuedoscientific monstrosity has probably killed more people and caused more misery than Stalin or Hitler.

[Hawthorn]

Any list that omits Sigmund Freud is seriously deficient.

Moreover, David Ricardo probably had a worse influence than did some authors on the list. Without his fatally flawed "labor theory of value," the logical underpinning of Das Kapital would have been kaput.

(I think Ricardo fully deserves infamy in spite of the fact that he got the theory correct when he addressed international trade. Even without Ricardo's theoretical refinement, Adam Smith's anti-mercantilist exposition made a perfectly adequate defense of free trade.)

[Waverunner]

When my son was in high school, he began to read various philosophers. He began with the classical, the went on to Nietzsche. I saw him with Beyond Good and Evil and asked him if he saw the obvious flaw int it, He said what do you mean dad, it’s very consistent. I said look at the cover - Beyond good and evil .. You have to give up your moral compass to buy into it. Keen grasp of the obvious.He hates it when I do that to him.

[Le Chien Rouge]

The liberal list of most harmful books of the same time period:

1) Capitalism and Freedom
2) The Road to Serfdom
3) Atlas Shrugged
4) Huckleberry Finn—(it’s got the N word in it)
5) Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
6) Conscience of a Conservative
7) The Gulag
8) Black Rednecks and White Liberals
9) America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

.....and of course the Christian Bible will always rank very high on the liberal list of harmful books.

[philly-d-kidder]

Thanks...

[dfwgator]

Wanda: You’re a big stupid ape.
Otto: Do big stupid apes read Nietzsche?
Wanda: Yes they do Otto, they just don’t understand it.

[Natural Born 54]

Agreed - should definitely be among the top ten.

[Renegade]

The Art of Loving —Eric Frommer

[US Navy Vet]

Give the ENTIRE title is this waste of paper: On the origin of species by means of natural selection,: Or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life

[Renegade]

Sort of like “ The Harrad Experiment “

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I’m not sure I’d include Mein Kampf because it is basically unreadable. At least, it defeated me...twice!

Excellent point! Remember the game, "Is it Al Gore or the Unibomber?", where you'd read a passage and the listener had to guess whether it was from Earth in the Balance or The Unibomber Manifesto. Really hard to tell the difference, actually.

Anyway, I made up a game, "Is it Gephardt or Hitler?", where you do the same thing, with the understanding that certain terms were interchangable: "the Jews" for "the rich", "the German people" for "working families", etc. You get the idea. At least Hitler was sincere. Really hard to tell the difference, actually. (I was on to this long before that plagarist, Jonah Goldberg.)

[T Minus Four]

The Book of Mormon

[SeaHawkFan]

You left out Free To Choose by Milton and Rose Freidman.

[Sherman Logan]

The Manifesto and the Koran should share #1. Basically the same , with a 10th century twist.

They may both be dangerous, but they are not the same. It's difficult to imagine two ideologies more different than Marxism and Islam.

Marxism is actually closer to Christianity, and indeed has been appropriately called a Christian heresy.

[meadsjn]

Moreover, David Ricardo probably had a worse influence than did some authors on the list. Without his fatally flawed "labor theory of value," the logical underpinning of Das Kapital would have been kaput.

(I think Ricardo fully deserves infamy in spite of the fact that he got the theory correct when he addressed international trade. Even without Ricardo's theoretical refinement, Adam Smith's anti-mercantilist exposition made a perfectly adequate defense of free trade.)

Excellent synopsis.