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These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx'sThe 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'tHelp), 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 exposé, 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' Discourse on Method "proved" God's existence only by making Him a creation of our own ego
* How Hobbes' 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 The 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 tobe 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
This book is simple, humorous, addictive philosophy book that it is easy to get absorbed into. The book avoids using only logic and dry statements that are common in many philosophy materials. The author employs the use of sarcasm and ridiculous scenarios to undercut the reasoning of the authors in the books he mentions. This style makes the book entertaining and easy to read as well as enlightening. The author takes an uncommon and unpopular approach of tackling 15 popular books and connecting them to the tragedies of societies (thus the title). The author encourages the reader to read these books themselves but only to see the folly in their reasoning. The author draws connections between events and ideologies in the books that many sociologist, philosophers, etc may disagree with, so be prepared. It is a interesting book for people who have read some of these "15 books" and want a view if their effects on society at large. You don't have to be a philosophy major to understand the simple reasoning in the book.
5 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 27, 2008
Wiker demonstrates that the pen is still mightier than the sword. The horrific ideas contained in the books he surveys could only have been imposed upon an unsuspecting population at the point of a sword, as many of them were. Wiker reveals the common denominator of these works 'godlessness' along with their shared outcome 'oppression'. As Wiker himself states in the book, bad ideas have really bad consequences. Here's a good idea: buy this book for the thoughtful dad on your Father's Day list!
3 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted August 4, 2008
This is just your standard right wing ignorant and dishonest rant. In typical fashion, the author claims to be doing you a favor by reading these books so that you don't have to. Don't read this book, read the books he attacks. Then read this book so that you can see what lengths people will go to to lie to you. Oh, and this dude's 'Ph.D.' is in 'Theological Ethics'. So you know he is REAL qualified to discuss things intelligently and objectively.
2 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.stewardship
Posted January 5, 2013
A really good synopsis of the major athesist authors and the effect their misguided philosophy and flawed scientific papers have had on society.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.pet21PG
Posted December 6, 2011
worth reading - great book - 10/10
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.A_Musician
Posted March 30, 2010
It seems devout Roman Catholic Wiker forgot to include one book that's certainly had far-reaching negative impact on humanity. A book full of ambiguous, contradictory, disjointed parables. A book that asserts that there are things that lie outside of reason, that man's life is ruled by an ambiguously defined entity that he is to obey without question, directed by this entity's self-appointed representatives. Representatives who however, can't seem to reach a unanimous consensus as to exactly what the "Big Book Of Ambiguous Parables" actually means.
He seems to forget that there was already a healthy legacy of atrocities committed by Bible-waving Christians that predated any of the books on his list. He seems to be unaware that mankind's progress has only increased as infection by the intellectual cancer of religion - of which Communism is one, merely substituting "The State" for "God" - has lessened. If it were up to Wiker's Catholic church, we'd still be living in the Dark Ages. Not that they didn't try their darndest to keep us there mind you - threatening, torturing and killing those who dared oppose their dusty, rancid mysticism - how they treated Galileo and others who questioned church doctrine.
Wiker apparently hasn't noticed how things are in the part of the world that DOES make their own book of disjointed parables law. He's perhaps unaware that America fought a war to get out from under the rule of a nation in which heresy was a crime, that America's Founding Fathers purposely drafted a constitution devoid of any Biblical references though it did forbid gov't from imposing a state religion or requiring any test of religious affiliation to hold public office.
Maybe Wiker will include the Bible, Torah and Qur'an in his next revision.
0 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 16, 2011
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Overview
These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx'sThe 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 ...