Download 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't by Benjamin Wiker PDF

By Benjamin Wiker

You've heard of the "Great Books"?
These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto to Alfred Kinsey's Sexual habit within the Human Male, those "influential" books have resulted in struggle, genocide, totalitarian oppression, kinfolk breakdown, and disastrous social experiments. And but those authors' undesirable principles are nonetheless well known and pervasive--in truth, they may effect your personal considering with out your knowing it. right here with the antidote is Professor Benjamin Wiker. In his scintillating new ebook, 10 Books That Screwed Up the realm (And five Others that did not Help), he seizes each one of those evil books via its malignant middle and exposes it to the sunshine of day. during this witty, discovered, and provocative exposé, you are going to learn:

* Why Machiavelli's The Prince used to be the foundation for a protracted checklist of tyrannies (Stalin had it on his nightstand)
* How Descartes' Discourse on technique "proved" God's life basically by means of making Him a construction of our personal ego
* How Hobbes' Leviathan ended in the assumption that we have got a "right" to no matter what we want
* Why Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto may perhaps win the award for the main malicious ebook ever written
* How Darwin's The Descent of guy proves he meant "survival of the fittest" to be utilized to human society
* How Nietzsche's past reliable and Evil issued the decision for a global governed completely via the "will to power"
* How Hitler's Mein Kampf used to be a type of "spiritualized Darwinism" that money owed for his genocidal anti-Semitism
* How the pansexual paradise defined in Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa became out to be a construction of her personal sexual confusions and aspirations
* Why Alfred Kinsey's Sexual habit within the Human Male used to be easily autobiography masquerading as science

Witty, stunning, and instructive, 10 Books That Screwed Up the area bargains a short schooling at the worst principles in human history--and how we will be able to stay away from them within the future.

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10 Books That Screwed Up the World

You might have heard of the "Great Books"? those are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto to Alfred Kinsey's Sexual habit within the Human Male, those "influential" books have resulted in warfare, genocide, totalitarian oppression, kinfolk breakdown, and disastrous social experiments.

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Even more, our human bodies are merely self-running machines. Hence Descartes is also known as the father of modern dualism. Dualism is the belief that human beings aren’t one thing—an intimate and essential union of soul and body—but two entirely dif- Discourse on Method (1637) 27 ferent and independent entities, a ghostly soul banging around in a ghastly machine. If Descartes is the father of modern dualism, what does dualism itself beget? A walking philosophical bipolar disorder, a creature who is not at home in creation, a creature who dwells in dual extremes, either as wholly a ghost or entirely a robot.

Again, it regularly occurs in the history of science. We’ll cite one interesting instance. A number of prominent scientists, beginning in 1877 with Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, were convinced that they saw through their telescopes an intricate system of canals on Mars. These canals were all very geometrical and hence obviously carried water for the great Martian civilization. The certainty of intelligent life on Mars was trumpeted (with the aid of businessman and amateur astronomer Percival Lowell).

They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. ”15 48 10 BOOKS THAT SCREWED UP THE WORLD There are, of course, important differences with Marx. , “the arts”) caused our misery, then the only way to progress was to go backward, to recreate as best one could the condition of the undeveloped human animal, shaking off the artificial chains of society and returning to the purity of nature.

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