Subversiveness is relative

[vettecat]

Got this from a friend, thought it was rather interesting:

Human Events asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Each panelist nominated a number of titles and then voted on a ballot including all books nominated. A title received a score of 10 points for being listed No. 1 by one of our panelists, 9 points for being listed No. 2, etc. Appropriately, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, earned the highest aggregate score and the No. 1 listing.

(I've cut out the synopsis of what each book is about; if anyone would like me to add those back in, let me know.)

1. The Communist Manifesto
Authors: Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
Publication date: 1848
Score: 74

2. Mein Kampf
Author: Adolf Hitler
Publication date: 1925-26
Score: 41

3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
Author: Mao Zedong
Publication date: 1966
Score: 38

4. The Kinsey Report
Author: Alfred Kinsey
Publication date: 1948
Score: 37

5. Democracy and Education
Author: John Dewey
Publication date: 1916
Score: 36

6. Das Kapital
Author: Karl Marx
Publication date: 1867-1894
Score: 31

7. The Feminine Mystique
Author: Betty Friedan
Publication date: 1963
Score: 30

8. The Course of Positive Philosophy
Author: Auguste Comte
Publication date: 1830-1842
Score: 28

9. Beyond Good and Evil
Author: Freidrich Nietzsche
Publication date: 1886
Score: 28

10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Author: John Maynard Keynes
Publication date: 1936
Score: 23

Honorable Mention
These books won votes from two or more judges:

The Population Bomb
by Paul Ehrlich
Score: 22

What Is To Be Done
by V.I. Lenin
Score: 20

Authoritarian Personality
by Theodor Adorno
Score: 19

On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill
Score: 18
(oh, like that isn't a telling entry)

Beyond Freedom and Dignity
by B.F. Skinner
Score: 18

Reflections on Violence
by Georges Sorel
Score: 18

The Promise of American Life
by Herbert Croly
Score: 17

Origin of the Species
by Charles Darwin
Score: 17

Madness and Civilization
by Michel Foucault
Score: 12

Soviet Communism: A New Civilization
by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Score: 12

Coming of Age in Samoa
by Margaret Mead
Score: 11

Unsafe at Any Speed
by Ralph Nader
Score: 11

Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir
Score: 10

Prison Notebooks
by Antonio Gramsci
Score: 10

Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
Score: 9

Wretched of the Earth
by Frantz Fanon
Score: 9

Introduction to Psychoanalysis
by Sigmund Freud
Score: 9

The Greening of America
by Charles Reich
Score: 9

The Limits to Growth
by Club of Rome
Score: 4

Descent of Man
by Charles Darwin
Score: 2

(The web page lists the judges, too.)

Comments

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

Makes you want to read them, doesn't it?

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually! :-)

[c1.livejournal.com]

It took me a second to realize why Nader's book was up there, but it makes sense- without Nader, product liability wouldn't be what it is today, and that anti-free-market-think isn't in line with conservative thought. For that matter, so too with Rachel Carson's book. What subversives!

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Carson's book certainly belongs on the list. Like Nader, she simply made stuff up (http://reason.com/rb/rb061202.shtml), and panicked people into supporting needless, costly, and damaging legislation. But while it's difficult to pin many deaths on Nader's lies (the Corvair was as safe as any car of its time), Carson, by convincing so many people, on no evidence whatsoever, that DDT is bad for humans, is indirectly responsible for millions of deaths by malaria in countries that would still be using the stuff if not for this panic.