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10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

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I remember almost thirty years ago a brother-in-law retorting, during a discussion about child-rearing, that he intended to raise his children as wild stallions in a state of nature. I recall commenting that the poor deluded man was merely repeating what he had heard in his sophomore sociology and psychology classes and that, in doing so, he manifested his ignorance of the subject.

One reviewer of Dr. Wiker's book, "10 Books that Screwed up the World," offered the following thought:

"Ideas can certainly be dangerous but, once they are articulated in print, a thinking person has an opportunity to consider them rationally and counter them. This process is much more difficult if we are working from an oral articulation of ideas because orators can sway emotion and equivocate more effectively."

While intended to be a criticism of Professor Wiker ("Is this guy an enemy of free speech?"), the critic, in fact, makes his point; few people have actually read these books. Like my brother-in-law, had they actually read Rousseau, other than Emile, had they actually read Hobbes, other than the usual snippets of Leviathan offered, had they read Darwin's the Descent of Man, Machiavelli's The Prince, etc., they might have been better able to digest the unfounded and destructive utopian visions of Marx, Lenin, Hitler, and assess the illusions conjured by Freud, Sanger, Mead, and Kinsey. The reality is that few who have proffered these writers as icons of enlightened intellectualism, namely the professorial and teaching class, have taken the time to consider their products rationally. And, certainly those to whom it has been asserted that the writings comprise a source of deep reflection beneficial to humanity - essential to an understanding of humanitas - have not taken the opportunity to consider them rationally and counter the assertions. These vapid arguments have seeped into the mainstream only because they were developed by "so-and-so." In other words, the foundation is ipse dixit; the proof is hearsay.

That's why Professor Wiker bemoans the fact that the writings he has singled out have had such profound influence. If writings are not actually read and subjected to rational assessment, it would be better had they never been written. Unfortunately, the writings that Wiker addresses have been and continue to be highly detrimental to the body politic and the human soul. That is the more important reason that they should never have been written.

"10 Books that Screwed up the World" is easily read in a couple of sittings; is readily understood; and, is a must read especially for young people headed for the "castles" of higher learning.

Since so many others have reviewed the content, let me just say that:

a) I actually read the book
b) I teach as an adjunct in a related area in higher education and am a published academic author
c) It is a popular synthesis, so it won't be all things to all people
d) Overall, it is quite correct that these books (and a few others) have greatly damaged human society, more so by a great deal of uncritical thinking that is lauded in higher education as critical thinking
e) This is the reason why almost all of the negative reviews don't critique the book but instead make bigoted, hate-speech toward religious people who never hurt anyone (and these reviewers have clearly never read this book, the books the author mentions or the Bible for that matter--not counting a few quotes from some wacky, tokin' college prof (aka most of my professional colleagues))
f) Read this book--what people don't know really has and is damaging humanity

Benjamin Wiker, who has authored numerous books of late and manages to thesource website has written another book here dealing with books he alleges have, by the ideas posited by the authors of these text, had horrendous consequences. I have found almost all of the negative reviews absolutely hilarious. I mean, one reviewer rants about President Bush! Likewise, however, I have found most of the extremely positive reviews to be somewhat short sided. I hope my review brings more critical analyses, which I have found only in a couple of other reviews here.

I normally try and keep my reviews short. I mean after all, who wants to read my drivel; but this is one case that I may have to develop a large review. First, on to the negative side: Wiker includes a text in this book that quite puzzles me.

First is his inclusion of Rene Descartes "Discource on Methods" (1637). Wiker claims "He (Descartes) proved God's existence, but only by making it depend on our thinking Him into existence. By his good intentions--if indeed they really were good--he fathered every flavor of self-congratulatory solipsism . . . and made religion a creation of our own ego." He further charges Descartes for opening a new era of skepticism when in effect trying to find away around it. I am not sure this is a fair assessment. While Descartes' starting "point" can be criticized (which Wiker does), Descartes "method" also has some very strong points as well. The problem is when one uses skepticism as a pre-text to only buttress one's presuppositions (which happens often, I agree); however, it does not necessarily follow that one will use Descartes starting point incorrectly. Wiker here does not make his case and in the process he impugns Descartes motives as well. This is also curious since Descartes was a strong defender in the rational belief in God. He developed forms of the cosmological argument and ontological argument. He further demonstrated that truth is objective, knowable, and rational. I would agree that there is fault to find here, (his ontological argument makes an invalid transition from thought to reality), but to make it a runner-up to the most dangerous books is I suggest faulty. On other books, where I agree with him their results and logical outworkings have potential effects, I often found him dealing with side issues instead of the weightier ones.

Also, why I think Kinsey's book is a form of intellectual impersonation, I think the effects of this book have really been minuscule. I posit that the sexual immoral behavior so prevalent today gets as much from the foundations laid by Kinsey as they do from multiple other areas (other media and including again Nietzsche, Freud, etc, etc.). Wiker may be right here, but he does not provide enough research to my satisfaction that most of the intellectual establishment embraced Kinsey's ideas back then or now.

On the positive side, there is much in this book that is good. It first, when it is on target, reminds us that Ideas Have Consequences! Our society does not want to always believe that their idols of intellect have often proved disastrous and in addition, it was the logical outworking of the ideas set forth. Many who look for support for a world without individual responsibility look to the existentialist philosopher Nietzsche, whose Beyond Good and Evil (and other works), has set a many persons and much of modern society on a quest of indulgence - as he asserted "They (the overmen) determine the whether and the to what end of mankind." He even question principles of injure no man (or person) and he rejected the "soft" virtues of love and humility and accept the "hard" male virtues of harshness.

In addition, he rightly includes Darwin's Descent of Man. Wiker here provides Darwin's own words (in context no less, which many others who have sought to disgrace Darwin rarely do), but Wiker shows how Darwin's caveat to his "eugenics" statements does not negate the logical conclusions of his ideas and his ideas have been used for eugenics purposes in the Western world to ill effect (Nazis and eugenics in America). Those who want to decry that this is an unfair conclusion must completely disregard the evidence and logical outworking of ideas.

There is more that can be said. In some respects, I thought this book was right on target, in other respects, I was left wanting more research and analysis. I think that more of a backdrop should have been provided and less books discussed. This would have provided a more robust discussion on the top 10 books and would have made his presentation stronger.

Serious books contain ideas and arguments which can have a profound impact on the rest of the world. Ideas, in other words, have consequences, and the musing of intellectuals and academics do not stay sealed up in ivory towers, but tend to filter down through the rest of society.

That may not be a bad thing if the original ideas are good ideas, sound ideas, helpful ideas. But when the ideas are bad, then we must expect some bad consequences. And that happens to be the subject of this book: we have had some very influential books with some pretty profoundly bad ideas, and we have seen the bitter fruit of those bad ideas.

Wiker lists ten such books - by Marx, Darwin, Mill, Nietzsche, Lenin, Sanger, Freud, Mead, Hitler and Kinsey - which have been particularly harmful, and then mentions a further five - by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, Rousseau and Freidan - which also have inflicted their fair share of damage.

The world would be a much better place, argues Wiker, if these fifteen books had never been written. He is not arguing for censorship here, and urges us all to read and study these books, but as he makes clear in some detail, each of these fifteen titles have unleashed a tsunami of bloodshed, violence, oppression, hardship and destruction.

Consider just a few titles. Marx and Engels' 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party was clearly a book laden with ideas. But they were bad ideas which resulted in untold misery and death. Indeed, the book was no mere treatise on political theory, says Wiker, but a call to action. And action aplenty has been forthcoming from it ever since.

Whether in the form of Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot, the poisoned ideas of this book have resulted in poisoned fruit and the enslavement and death of millions of people. Marxism is "an ideology fashioned according to a man's image," says Wiker, "and forced on history with all the uncompromising power a grand theory can muster".

At the heart of this volume was the commitment to atheism and materialism. Given this worldview, mankind is viewed as simply part of the animal world, and can be treated accordingly. The reductionist ideology of Marxism cannot do proper justice to human beings and human history. Indeed, man becomes a mere abstraction, to be swept aside by the onrushing logic of dialectical materialism.

So Marx set about to create the "New Man" and was quite happy to sacrifice millions of ordinary men to get to his classless utopia. Of course utopia never arrived, and for 70-plus years in the Soviet Union we saw the real fruit of the Marxist worldview.

Consider also Kinsey and his Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, penned 100 years after the Manifesto. The sexologist in many ways laid the foundation for the sexual hedonism which is so all pervasive today. He certainly paved the way for Hugh Hefner and the Playboy revolution. The book "washed away every moral boundary of sexuality with a torrent of charts, graphs, and technical lingo".

But the guise of neutral, disinterested science was just that - a guise. Kinsey was a man on a mission. He had perverted sexual tastes of his own, and his real aim was to get the world to accept his own sexual perversions.

Indeed, Kinsey was a passionate Darwinist (another author discussed in this book) who felt morality had no place in discussions of sex, and whatever is, - sexually speaking - simply ought to be. Nature knows no boundaries, so neither should we. Any and all sexual expressions are just fine, and we need to resist any moral qualms we might have about any expression of sexuality. Thus incest, bestiality, sex with children and all other sexualities are to be embraced and accepted.

Some of the most repulsive aspects of his book had to do with his reports on the sexuality of children. He demonstrates in disgusting detail what he claims are the numerous orgasms infants as young as four months can experience, and how they seem to enjoy it. But how were such studies undertaken, without involving paedophile activity? He in fact used data collected by child molesters. Given what is described in his book, it is a wonder, says Wiker, that Kinsey was not arrested.

The other thirteen books and their authors are not let off the hook either by Wiker. Together they make for some pretty depressing and ugly reading. But we need to be aware of what the intellectual and ruling elites believe, and why. These books have left their mark, and it is not a very pretty mark.

These fifteen books were certainly all great books. But as Wiker reminds us, there is a very real difference between the adjectives "great" and "good". The two terms are not synonymous. These books have been great in the sense of having a profound impact on society and history, but they contain ideologies and ideas which were for the most part not good.

Wiker admittedly writes with a bias - he writes as a Christian. He finds a common thread running through most of these books: they have tended to see the problem in terms of something in the world that needs correcting, instead of something in us that needs major moral and spiritual surgery. Thus these secular revolutionaries have tended to offer flawed analyses of the problems, and proposed coercive utopias as remedies.

But these alternative gardens of Eden and paradises on earth have all been monumental disasters, which have costs millions of lives. These were attempts to make heaven on earth, without realising that man and his nature is the problem, and that man without God simply creates more hell on earth.

Ideas certainly do have consequences, and the bad consequences of these fifteen bad books have clearly affected us all. Worldviews matter, and we need to be aware of how faulty worldviews result in much damage, confusion and injury. Wiker deserves praise for alerting us to the world of bad ideas and their consequences.

It is important to realize what Mr. Riker's book is and what it is not. It is first of all a "philosophy popularizer" - a readable text making the occasionally opaque and difficult prose of original authors accessible in some level to many readers. But what it is not is a detailed, scholarly work of the same title and filling several volumes. I believe such a work could, in theory, be written. It is undeniable that authors such as Marx and Rousseau have had disciples who commit crimes of nefarious magnitude. Pol Pot was educated in Paris and became a disciple of Rousseau, whose writings on the state of nature became his inspiration which culminated in the Khmer Rouge. As Wiker notes, self-professing Marxists (Lenin, Stalin, Mao) are responsible for great and unhuman crimes. It is thus reasonable and even mandatory to engage with these authors and raise the question that it might just be in something they say.

Further, Wiker's response to the evil he finds in these works is to encourage their readings. I have read and will continue to read Machiavelli and Rousseau, for instance. Their books are works of surpassing genius and craft answers to the perennial human questions. Their importance is undisputed and Wiker does not dispute it. But he is concerned with practical application; because young men studying politics have a view to action instead of knowledge, it is vitally important what they read and that they be devoted to the beautiful things. It is one thing for men of sober judgment to read The Prince or the Discourse or the Will to Power and discuss them in a spirit of academic debate. But when they are young men wishing to reform and change or save the world, applications of Nietzche, Rousseau, and Machiavelli may turn ugly. It may be that careful, diligent readings of these men may prove them to be somewhat different than what Wiker claims they are, but this requires long, close study, which the young, in their efforts to effect political change, have neither the time nor inclination to pursue. In a word, philosophy is dangerous, and particularly for young students of politics. It is this thesis which Wiker pursues in his book.

The most unfortunate part of the book is its style. I am a student of philosophy and wished for a more elevated, scholarly discussion - less emotively charged writing and exclamations, for example. On the other hand, this was not written for specialists but for laymen. The best part of the book is the connecting Wiker repeatedly draws towards eugenics. Whether or not the eugenics thesis is true (and I think it is), when the young politician remakes society on such principles, the results will be predictable. Emphasizing Hitler's anti-Semitism as an instance of his devotion of eugenics is particularly helpful.

To conclude; this book is a provocative look at some of the classics in political theory, ethics, and social thought over the past 500 years. It should stimulate one into buying and reading (a good bibliography is included in the notes section) all the books cited here and remembering a profound truth: It is not appropriate for the young person to be a student of politics.

Many of the reviews here and also on audible, seem to focus on the fact that the author is Christian as reason to avoid, and apparently, to become very angry after reading the book. All I would say is: 1. if you believe human rights are innate 2. human dignity and worth is innate and 3. moral truth is non-negotiable and transcends culture or society, then you will probably read the book without getting upset, and you likely will find it interesting. If on the other hand, you believe that 1. human rights are arbitrary, evolve, and come from government 2. human beings are animals and the value of a human life is equal to the value of any given animal life and 3. morality is relative, and political movments can alter moral "truths" to their benefit or for the perceived benefit of mankind, then you probably will be angry at Wiker and his "Christian fundamentalist" "clap-trap". More disturbing though, is how many reviewers attack the author as "Christian" as if this invalidates his ability to think and reason. It is amazing how successful the secular left has been at making "religion" the antonym of "thought". There was a time when all of Western Civilization, science, math, jurisprudence, academic research, hellenistic reason, was preserved and cultivated and embodied by the Church, when both reason and morality were both necessary for some idea or some person to be counted as virtuous. Today many reviewers here feel compelled to show their secular, cultural-relativist intolerance by giving an unsubstantiated 1-star review and pronouncing to the world, "Don't read this book, the author has a Christian world view!" The universities have done their job well.

While I agree with many of the author's complaints about the baneful influences of various books, he so overdoes matters that should the book itself be taken very seriously by many, it might have comparably harmful influence. The problem is the author is as careless and shallow in his examinations as authors he writes about can be said to be.

One can start with his failing to make linguistic issues certain, like beginning German nouns with capitals, e.g. in "Übermensch" or "Kampf", the last of which is in its context closer to "fight" or "battle" than his "struggle".

Next, one can wonder why he included J.S. Mill among "Ten Big Screw-Ups" but left Rousseau among "5 Others That Didn't Help". Rousseau's pernicious influence can be likened to that of Marx and Darwin. In The Social Contract the first sentence in his first chapter states: "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." Marx picked this up in the conclusion of the Manifesto of the Communist Party: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains." Rousseau is consequently behind both the Reign of Terror and the Bolshevik revolution, whose Dialectical Materialism alongside other disasters also owes to Darwin.

J.S. Mill's philosophy is instead related to the very "pursuit of happiness" in The Declaration of Independence, and the "bill of rights" in the Constitution. These appear to comport with the introductory quote by author Wiker (p.74) of Mill, who states as desirable "an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments...", this being protected by government. But author Wiker vehemently objects, characterizing another quote (p.83), one saying "All the grand sources...of human suffering are in a great degree...conquerable by human care and effort", as "words of a dangerous madman".

Author Wiker objects (p.78) to by him found Epicurean equations "Good = Pleasure" and "Evil = Pain", calling them "moral misreasoning", saying (p.79) that accordingly "morality's foundation is not God but pleasure and pain". He speaks as a Christian, and he may well find his justification in Scripture, but of concern is how people arrange their lives in this world, lacking dependability on everyone's religious convictions. And the precepts by which an envisioned democracy functions through its laws are very similar to ones in the concerned religions; guarding against murder, theft and so forth. Author Wiker's "misreasoning" can correspondingly apply to himself.

It can notably apply to his treatment of Descartes complained about already by other reviewers here. Poor Descartes seems to take the rap from all sides lately; most of it comes from sources opposed to the author reviewed, namely from materialists, upset by Cartesian dualism of mind and matter, and insisting that all reality is of matter. Strangely, our author contrariwise complains that Descartes through his dualism himself asserts materialism. This is obviously false, and apparently author Wiker's underlying dissatisfaction is that Descartes' philosophy is not grounded in Christianity. He thus amazingly contends logical failures of one of the greatest minds in history; that it is rather our author whose logic falters is easily demonstrable.

He discusses Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy), saying (p.23) it "contains one of the most pernicious confusions possible, so destructive that we might very well call it the first sin. We catch the error if", leading to "René, isn't it really the other way around? In order to think, I first have to exist...". But Ben, this isn't the other way around at all; it is the same statement differently phrased. Logically the statement is "(my thinking) implies (my existence)", applying in both cases. Again, the author says (p.24) that Descartes "admits" that "in order to think, one must exist"; again the same implication differently phrased.

The author's effort here is to criticize Descartes' skepticism, quoting him by way of introduction (p.17): "I reject as absolutely false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt...". What is left out is the subsequent (p.20) "so as to see whether...anything in my set of beliefs remains that is entirely indubitable". Descartes' idea was that since so much of received knowledge is false, he'll try to see what will remain true after tentatively peeling off possible falsehoods. Our author rejects this as a "good recipe for insanity", that "we could doubt even the solidity of the ground we stand on", etc. But Descartes offers ample explanation, such as the unreality of dreams that impress us as reality. Most of all, he introduced epistemology, the important concept of how through our minds we get to know reality, a concept elaborated by the British empiricists in pointing out how perceptions can or cannot be relied on.

Author Wiker doesn't comprehend this, as by (p.23) calling it "simply ridiculous to single out thinking as the act by which I know I am existing" and saying (p.26) "reality is the appropriate test of our everyday beliefs and scientific theories". But by "thinking" Descartes meant mental activity, cognition, in general, as the door to reality, and correspondingly our author's "test" of reality depends question-beggingly on the form in which appropriate perceptions enter our mind.

The author further protests Descartes' attempts at proving God by reason, an issue also addressed by previous reviewers. He evidently holds biblical revelation more authentic; this may be his prerogative, but he is unjustified in criticizing other ways as failing logically, in the like absence of demonstration of the truth of a religious belief.

Although I sympathize with the author's sentiments in general, his excessive or unwarranted attacks of some of the authors he deals with makes his stories less than persuasive.

It's pretty clear that Benjamin Wiker fancies himself as a scholar capable of analyzing and rebutting other philosophers' works. After finishing 10 Books That Screwed Up The World, I found Wiker didn't have much claim to that description. The few moments in the book when Wiker actually takes a scholarly tack toward analyzing the works he questions are the most effective. This effectiveness is best displayed in his chapter on Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa. Wiker excerpts passages from Mead's book, and carefully weaves his own observations on those passages with other scholars' analysis to make an extremely effective rebuttal.

Unfortunately, the scholarly approach that Wiker shows in his chapter on Mead is rarely presented. More often, Wiker simply excerpts passages from the books and offers his opinion on those passages. The problem with that approach is that Wiker isn't a good enough writer/philosopher to effectively present the rebuttal he's trying to make. Too often, the rebuttal seems little more than the following points:

- "See all the dead bodies/ruined lives that the ideas in these books produced. That's proof that they're bad."
- "These books don't follow Christian teaching, therefore they're bad."

Neither of those points is necessarily incorrect. However, a more scholarly approach would result in a deeper and more meaningful rebuttal than what Wiker generates.

In the end, the reader is left with an editorial instead of a scholarly work. And, frankly, the writing and analysis in this editorial isn't much better than what one could find on a blog. Consequently, readers should spend their money on a more meaningful study of these philosophical works, and not an editorial masquerading as an insightful examination.

If Dr. Wiker had included "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", an
anti-semitic publication which was Hitler's favorite book, I would have given Dr. Wiker top marks for his interesting book.
The "Protocols", still popular in the Arab world, has led to many, many deaths and a vast array of anti-semitism. It is one of the most dangerous books around.

Being a lover of "lists" of just about anything, I devoured the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's "50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century" and Human Events' "Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" during my unfortunate years at RMIT, in the process sending them to all my teachers and minders (whose opinions about them varied but were generally politely unappreciative).

Although I knew of Benjamin Wiker from his earlier Architects of the Culture of Death (in the process ironically pronouncing his name as "wicca" instead of "wigh-ker"), the reason I caught onto "10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help" was its strange cover, which recalled old State Library of Victoria copies of the old Wisdens I love so much. I immediately desired to look and find out what books were being attacked by Wiker for having done a great deal of damage, and what I found showed a man very much in agreement with the views of other right-wing organisations I had been reading and critiquing.

More recently with my finding of a video of Wiker discussing the book, I discovered some important and subtle points that made me want to have a really good look at what Wiker says here. Given the inaccessibility of print copies in Australia, I have had to use other means to read the book.

What one should say in favour of Wiker is that he undoubtedly is a skilled writer. In terms of ability to explain his viewpoints with language that ordinary people can easily read. He also writes very firmly, even sharply, about how these books have influenced things the Catholic Church considers evil. A clear case can be seen in the way, with many fewer words, he can produce a more convincing case against Alfred Kinsey's research than Judith Reisman. He also shows how clearly most of these ideas are linked to one another. Most importantly of all, Wiker consistently shows the generally unknown truth that the ideas Mill, Darwin and those they influenced like Hitler, Margaret Sanger and Peter Singer are closely related to little-known Greek philosophers Epicurus (third century BC) and Lucretius (1st century BC). The effect of this on the thinking of anybody with a serious interest in philosophy should be considerable. Most people, even conservatives, write with the impression that atheism as developed by the likes of Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer etc. etc. was a completely new idea, but Wiker, through his thoroughness, gives at the very least considerable doubt to such a claim. Wiker also gives clues as to who really forms the backbone of European, Canadian and New Zealand society today with his description of Hobbes in particular - it agree very well with what Arthur Brooks shows about the selfishness of these cultures.

On the other side of the ledger, I really do doubt that Wiker has actually found the most genuine chaff amongst the large number of atheist philosophers. For a start, anybody with serious knowledge of present-day culture world will know that the trends towards atheism have gone much further in Europe, Canada and New Zealand than in the United States. (In the case of Europe, they also began much earlier). This fact should make widepread knowledge in Europe, and perhaps Canada, New Zealand and the developed nations of Asia, a vital criterion for an author being considered for "10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help".

However, Wiker includes at least three authors whose impact has been much less in Europe and New Zealand than in the generally less secularised United States. For all his ability to expose Alfred Kinsey, to blame him for the sexual revolution is wrong given that Pat Buchanan - by my judgment a less able writer - is able to show that such authors like Gyorgy Lukacs and Alfred Hoche were in the 1910s doing exactly the same things as "Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male" did in the 1950s. Whilst those two authors may not have written nearly as much as Kinsey, Wiker's thoroughness in researching the roots of atheism combined with even basic knowledge of how secularised Europe is ought to tell him he has to research the roots of the sexual revolution before Kinsey. Wiker shows an honestly strange unwillingness to do this, as if he cannot imagine the sexual revolution had essential pre-Kinsey roots. Moreover, if the sexual revolution's pre-Kinsey roots were in books he has already condemned Wiker ought to spend some time explaining himself, but he does not.

Whilst the inclusion of Kinsey without adequate evidence he constitutes the deepest root of the sexual revolution is my major issue, the same logic can even more be applied to Betty Friedan, whose essential ideas, as Wiker himself even shows in "Architects of the Culture of Death", were put forward in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex fourteen years before "The Feminine Mystique". As for "Coming of Age in Samoa", whilst Wiker points out its roots in Rousseau, he jumps beyond Jules Michelet, whose La Sorciere led to a view of the witch-hunts I imagine Wiker would consider misleading and paved the way for a romantic and feminist view of primitive people before Mead was even born. There is also the omission of anything by post-Nietzsche European atheist philosophers such as Antonio Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks", Bertrand Russell, Martin Heidegger or Jean-Paul Sartre. If cultural differences today are any guide, at least some Continental philosophers must be more to blame for the spread of atheism than Mead, Friedan and possibly even Margaret Sanger.

Although Benjamin Wiker, following on directly from Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, shows in his interview how the simplicity of the ideas in these books greatly helped them "screw up" the world, he does not do this in the book or even discuss whether or not it was possible to have avoided their spread. This is a major mistake by too many writers on the Right, one generally avoided only by Austrian School economists and then only concerning depressions.

Overall, "10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help" is a well-written book for what it does discuss and the purpose thereof. However, it does not give enough evidence it discusses the right books or explain what could have been done in a past age to prevent their spread.