Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
Audiobook6 hours

10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

3/5

()

About this audiobook

You've heard of the "Great Books"?

These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, these "influential" books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, family breakdown, and disastrous social experiments. And yet these authors' bad ideas are still popular and pervasive-in fact, they might influence your own thinking without your realizing it. Here with the antidote is Professor Benjamin Wiker. In his scintillating new book, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help, he seizes each of these evil books by its malignant heart and exposes it to the light of day. In this witty, learned, and provocative expose, you'll learn:

-Why Machiavelli's The Prince was the inspiration for a long list of tyrannies (Stalin had it on his nightstand)

-How Descartes's Discourse on Method "proved" God's existence only by making Him a creation of our own ego

-How Hobbes's Leviathan led to the belief that we have a "right" to whatever we want

-Why Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto could win the award for the most malicious book ever written

-How Darwin's Descent of Man proves he intended "survival of the fittest" to be applied to human society

-How Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil issued the call for a world ruled solely by the "will to power"

-How Hitler's Mein Kampf was a kind of "spiritualized Darwinism" that accounts for his genocidal anti-Semitism

-How the pansexual paradise described in Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa turned out to be a creation of her own sexual confusions and aspirations

-Why Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was simply autobiography masquerading as science

Witty, shocking, and instructive, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World offers a quick education on the worst ideas in human history-and how we can avoid them in the future.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 8, 2008
ISBN9781400177912
10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

Related to 10 Books That Screwed Up the World

Related audiobooks

Literary Criticism For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for 10 Books That Screwed Up the World

Rating: 3.1904761904761907 out of 5 stars
3/5

42 ratings8 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This book should be called: 10 books church hate ‘cause take off its power throughtout history (and as a religious dumb, I’ll try to justify using nowadays falacious trump’s logic)
    This book is not worthy for nothing, it’s just sad.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This guy is out of his depth.
    I feel like I'm reading a collection of essays by my very well-meaning, but inexperienced undergraduate students. While it's kind of interesting, the guy hasn't done enough homework and I don't know how this got published.

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Mr. Wiker looks at Machiavelli, DeCartes, Hobbes, Marx, Darwin, Hitler, Nietsche, Mead, Sanger, and Kinsey and offers, in admittedly 20/20 hindsight, how this books negatively influenced thinking at the time they were published. Then he goes on to explain how these books are still influencing current day ideas, life and values.

    There is no doubt that some of these books, although not necessarily intentionally by the author, have come to be seen as “evil”. Mr. Wiker looks at them individually and as a successive group, one publication sometimes feeding off another in tone and idea. The author makes some good points without preaching. An interesting read, one that made me think and makes me want to delve a little deeper into the books he included.

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    While I agree with a few of the author's book choices, some of the books he choose as corrupting forces seemed to be reflections of their time period rather than written with the intent to corrupt the world around them as Wiker asserts. A few interesting facts were presented here and there, but mostly it was a warning against atheist authors. Not sure what I thought this would be about, but this definitely didn't meet my "expectations".

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Love this very accessible and compelling review of very significant scerw ups
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    To be short: Benjamin Wiker has no clue what he's writing about.It is hard to take seriously someone who pedantically goes out of his way to state that Descartes wrote his "Meditation on First Philosophy" in French rather than Latin, when, in fact, anyone with half a brain could have checked that Descartes, of course, wrote it in Latin—it was another six years before a French translation was published.It is also hard to take seriously a fool who does not list major religious works at the top of the list of books that caused harm in the world.If you're a rightwing religious nut, this book will be right up your alley.

    5 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I've only read a few of the books mentioned in this one. A couple of them, I did not like at all. However, the author's approach to these books is, in itself, very dangerous and part of the problem with conservatives in this country. The author does not contribute anything intellectually viable or new with his arguments about these "loathsome" books.

    The author thinks that is his Catholicism is a reasonable position to hold and attempts to tie all these books to atheism; hence they are inherently wrong (according to the author). His arguments are fraught with logical fallacies and the only people who would be convinced by them are biased, true-believers like him.

    4 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Should be titled: 10 books I didn't understand. The only book the author likes is the bible. I regret giving the author the courtesy of finishing this book.

    3 people found this helpful