"Ten Books That Screwed Up the World: And Five Others That Didn't Help" by Dr. Benjamin Wiker, 2008

"Ten Books That Screwed Up the World: And Five Others That Didn't Help" by Dr. Benjamin Wiker, 2008

I can’t recall ever reading a book that makes me want to commit violence or some other heinous crime against the author except for this one.  I was sorely pissed off by the end of the book. I felt bamboozled into keeping an open mind only to find myself struck with a final-uppercut-blow of the author’s seething  missives and tainted biases.

In fairness and in the spirit of constructive criticism, which the book lacked, the author seem to do a decent job of exposing fallacies in the arguments he covers and explaining how dangerous the philosophies can be if applied incorrectly or with hidden personal motives.

I was drawn to this book by its title and intrigued by its criticisms as I read on. There are some good points discussed, however, as soon as the critiques became nonconstructive and became a flame fest against modern philosophy and a roast of philosophers, it just became negative, and I was downright disgusted.

After closer inspection, the book content simply amounts to circumstantial fallacies, ad hominem, personal attacks, uncritical diatribe, no scholar value, all veiled under “cutesy” sarcasm.

One of the things I noticed, the author Dr. Wiker, equates atheism with immorality and, therefore, the undoing of man.  A common thread with every book, he notes, that the author was an atheist or simply rejects Christianity.

I think only people like Dr. Wiker himself will like this poor excuse for a book; that is, conservative evangelical Christians with very narrow minds. This book is a perfect example of the twisting of knowledge to justify one’s personal morality rooted in antifeminism, antihomosexuality, antiwomen, anti-choice, antiscience, anti-intellectualism..

The following lists the books covered:

Machiavelli – The Prince (1513)
Descartes – Discourse on Method (1637)
Hobbs – Leviathan (1651)
Rousseau – Discourse on Inequality (1755)
Marx – Communist Manifesto (1848)
Mill – Utilitarianism (1863)
Darwin – The Descent of Man (1871)
Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Lenin – The State and Revolution (1917)
Sanger – The Pivot of Civilization (1922)
Hitler – Mein Kampf (1925)
Freud – Future of an Illusion (1927)
Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Kinsey – Sexual Behavior in Human Male (1948)
Friedan – The Feminine Mystique (1963)

My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ (0 out of 5 stars)