The ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries. They turn out to be books that have a point of view different to the panel of conservatives who selected them. No surprises.
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Jan 23rd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Thanks for the list. I seem to have missed out reading a couple of them.
Probably the reason that horns haven’t grown up over my ears yet.
jb says: Hi Bhupinder. Such lists, of course, are merely a precursor to the burning of books. For these people, any branch of knowledge, insight or enlightenment which does not merge with their own particular world-view, joins a queue in which it is systematically harmful, dangerous, proscribed, destroyed, and all trace of it obliterated. Finally, because ideas and knowledge are internalized and cannot be destroyed, they surface again as verbal formulations, and those who utter them are deemed to be evil, unpatriotic, terrorists, (well, choose your own slur) who in turn must be branded and dealt with.
Jan 27th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Whilst I can understand why some of those books could be on list of that kind, I realised the formation of the people voting for them when I looked at the “almost made it list” I would guess they are “American God Fearing Christians”… Origin of the Species? it gave their game away.
I’m sure had they found a way to include books that weren’t published within the 19th or 20th century the Koran or the Torah would have featured at the top.