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10 Books That Screwed Up the World

And 5 Others That Didn't Help

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10 Books That Screwed Up the World

By: Benjamin Wiker
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
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About this listen

 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 this scintillating new book, he seizes each of these evil books by its malignant heart and exposes it to the light of day. 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.

    • ©2008 Benjamin Wiker (P)2008 Tantor     Civics & Citizenship Literary History & Criticism Politics & Government Words, Language & Grammar Writing & Publishing Witty Royalty Stalin Liberalism Socialism Morality
    All stars
    Most relevant  
    I don't know much about philosophy or the books that were summarised by this book, so the summary that was provided was certainly instructional and educational to a point.
    The further I got through the book however, the more some familiar conclusions kept coming up. For the most part, all the weird perverse ideologies of the authors seemed to stem from one common factor: atheism. In the end, I found this common conclusion overly simplistic and coloured every other assertion that the author made.
    The orator certainly had a distinctive voice with a very authoritarian tone, but as other reviewers have mentioned, didn't distinguish enough between standard text and quotes which made it easy to drift off and lose concentration.

    Interesting, but a hidden underlying common thread

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    Had potential, but is very unbalanced, with lots of falling back on ‘this author was evil because he was atheist’. Doesn’t mention any positives from any of the books, and spends more time telling the audience about the author than the book, or the effect of the book on the world.

    Preachy and one-sided

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    The author is so obviously some version of a born again fundamentalist Xtian that every single word demonstrates slavish adherence to various concoctions of xtian newspeak. Utterly opinionated with zero credibility for me.

    Born again bias, skewed and wasted work

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    This is the worst book I have ever listened to or read. It’s not just that his writing is simplistic but the fact is Wiker’s misogynism and Christian proselytising are nauseating. I’m not impressed with Audible as this should have been made clear in the blurb. Wiker attributes 100 million deaths to The Communist Manifesto yet there is not one chapter devoted to The Bible - how many ‘heathens’ were killed during The Crusades? Wiker does NOT present an in depth objective analysis of the books he has chosen, in fact much of his writing is character assassination. His description of Betty Friedan’s mother as “domineering yet beautiful” made me reach for the bucket! Urgh! I wanted to give this no stars but the Audible review bot is forcing me to give one star for each category so that this review can be published.

    DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!

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    Being unable to doubt that he doubted becomes ‘if I do anything I exist’.

    Read the books you’re trying to critique instead. Cartesian duality is wrong, yes, but not for the reasons this guy come up with.

    Doesn’t understand Descartes

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    Blatant Christian propaganda. if you're up for a sermon - this is the book for you. Atheists will find this preachy and a complete insult.

    0/10

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    Author reviews well known books and authors with religious logic.
    Describers Machiavelli as an atheist who is evil by renouncing god. (No doubt Machiavellism is unacceptable.)
    Describes Marxism as an evil idea because communism in Russia and China reveal awful casulties. His logics are rediculous because what is then Christianity if we judge it by the acts of Catholic pedofilic priests?!
    Really sad I wasted time and money.

    Wiker, 10 books that screwed the world

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    Exellent read, summarises alot of influences that have contributed to the degeneration of western society that most people don't realise and gives an opportunity to investigate further.

    great informative summary

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    The only reason I listened to the end was to leave an honest review.

    The author preaches anti atheism clap trap grouping great minds like Freud and Darwin in with Hitler and Machiavelli in order to discredit them completely.

    Anti women's choice
    Anti homosexuality
    Anti feminist / misogynist
    Sexual repression
    Anti actual science

    He blatantly cherry picks out of their writings to push his misogynist, homophobic opions.

    The only plus to this publication is that it has sparked my interest to read the publications he has slammed.

    Dangerous propaganda

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    I have struggled with this book. it's a simplistic, black and white interpretation of some of the most influential books ever written ( even if they may have had a bad influence). The author colours everything with a conservative, anti-atheist, anti-abortion slant with many snide remarks about "liberals". Politics aside, the author only focused on the bad aspects of the books without explaining the books in the context of their times and why they were so popular/influential or suggesting what our world would look like if the books hadn't been written. Sure, we could probably have done without Hitlers Mein Kampf, but most of the other books were important philosophical or political pieces that have had huge influence, both good and bad, on our world. Some of the comments may have been written in jest but, if so, the sarcasm was too fine for me to appreciate.
    Narrator was okay but didn't distinguish between quotes from the books in question and from the actual narrative very well.

    This is the book that shouldn't have been written

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