misericordia
My history teacher claimed that before Machiavelli came up with The Prince, he mainly wrote love stories and happy fiction.

any one know if that's true?

If it is, I guess one day he said "Screw this. I'm going to be a mean bastard and teach everyone else how to be mean bastards".

It is true, but you're missing an important point -- it wasn't just an arbitrary change in personality.

Machiavelli did some work as a spy for one of the big Italian families and was caputred by his enemies and had the ever-loving fark tortured out of him.

After that, he wasn't really the same guy, and he had a much more, well, serious outlook on life.

So, he wrote a book about how it would be better if maybe there was a government that was really in charge and not just a bunch of random gangs and crime families torturing the ever-loving fark out of each other all the time.

And I think he's right.

How could they omit Richard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"?

That book spawned more self-help gurus and whiny "self-actualizers" than you can shake an encounter group at.

/yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition.

slobarnuts: What? No Finnegans Wake?

That book has done more damage to society than Islam, Hitler, the devil and PJ O'Rourke

And is also probably the reason I never finished college. If Joyce could crank out this stuff and become world famous, I reasoned with the brilliant logic of 19 years, I could do the same, if only I drank enough Guinness to reach Hibernian Nirvana (or Korsakoff's, whichever came first).

/needless to say, there was a flaw in my clever plan.
//still keeping my day job 29 years later.

BlankReg: I'd have to add (from a purely aesthetic standpoint), everything by Hunter S. Thompson.

Reason: It fooled people into believing that drug-addled ranting could be considered "literature".

you've obviously never had the pleasure of experiencing them.

~of course...neither have i

LtDarkstar: I agree with others that the KORAN needs to be on this list big time.

OK, that's just ignorance talking. You need to read the Qur'an first and realize that a lot of the stories are found in the Torah (just slightly different spellings of names). The message is basically the same. So if you include the 1400 year old Qur'an, You need to also include the 5000 year old Torah, as well as the 2000 year old Testament of Jesus Christ.

How come the full title of this book is always so conveniently left out?




Without this book... you wouldn't have Sanger's and Hitler's books.

and give me a break... Behe's book as #1... over Mein Kampf??? WTF?

Truly sad to see so many people deluded by humanist philosophies

What, no Heart of Darkness? That craptastic book almost caused me to stab one of my literature professors in the eye when I was an undergrad at SDSU. Ditto Madame Bovary and Anna K. Oh, and New York Diaries. No Invisible Man?

What silly person made this list?

To go back to the beginning of the thread. Machiavelli did write comedies. I have found three so far and the humor makes our soap operas seem to make sense.

(They also were apparently put to music and performed with a woman writing the music, but from what I understand the scores no longer exist.)

Fortunately, everyone is too busy arguing and farting around on the internet to actually read books.

/Illiteracy rocks!

Strangely absent

So, yeah, I didn't get past Margaret Mead. Mostly because they've decided to trust the words of the National Catholic Record as a more credible source then the "founding mother: of modern anthropology....yeah.... What a load of crap.

No. 1 Darwin's Black Box: the Science community has overwhelming rejected it

I wonder why. Perhaps because it doesn't agree with them? Nahhhh, that can't be it....

/just kidding... I farkin' love this book.

I think we've all been forgetting a certain plague that corrupting everyone's minds...

/eeek! it's the devil!

apsparky: How come the full title of this book is always so conveniently left out?

Without this book... you wouldn't have Sanger's and Hitler's books.

and give me a break... Behe's book as #1... over Mein Kampf??? WTF?

Truly sad to see so many people deluded by humanist philosophies



Darwin came along at the right time. Herbert Spencer was talking about evolution long before Darwin published his book.

Black Zombie Jesus: /just kidding... I farkin' love this book.
**********
My kids' love 'em. They make for great bedtime reading once you move out of the Dr Seuss world.

Let's also not forget that Darwin started off as a Christian

The_Gallant_Gallstone: ...Hitler's a cool guy...I love Hitler.

Aha!

Surprisingly, the Bible didn't make the list.

What's not surprising, is self-hating Westerners suggesting that it
be included, while of course ignoring the Quran.

FTFA:
"The Pivot of Civilization"
Margaret Sanger, 1922
On the list because: it preaches eugenics
"the most urgent problem of to-day is how to limit and discourage
the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective."

I realize the theory of eugenics advocated forcing the policy on
people but the above quote is completely accurate none the less.

All comedy joking aside, the TFA stole the idea (and the title!) from


,

which is in bookstores now.

According to the book, the "preliminary screwups" were:

The Prince
Discourse on Method
Leviathan
and
Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men

The 10 Big Screwups of the title are:

Communist Manifesto
Utilitarianism
The Descent of Man
Beyond Good and Evil
The State and Revolution
The Pivot of Civilization
Mein Kampf
The Future of an Illusion
Coming of Age in Samoa
and
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

The Feminist Mystique is listed as a dishonorable mention.

Listology needs to get an original idea, or at least credit Dr. Wiker properly for the inspiration.

(Click picture for link to Amazon.com, which has a link to excepts.)

Sgt Eversman: "Darwin's Black Box" at No. 1 on that list? Ahead of Mein Kampf, The Prince, the Bible, etc.?

Fail

FTFA: "This list is in no particular order."

Double fail.

For tricking untold numbers of comic book readers into thinking Alan Moore has talent.

Art of War shouldn't be on the list. It actually promoted tactics and avoidance of combat when possible, and considering most battles back then were brutal, non-stop slaughterfests, usually resulting in the complete elimination of a side/town, this could only help lessen the violence. The author seems to be implying that the sides wouldn't have fought if they didn't have this book, and that's just silly.

I also think 'the Prince' gets a bad rep. Machiavelli was just stating that a leader should do what makes the most sense, regardless of whether it's right or wrong. No matter what their intentions, if a leader doesn't do what's best for his country and people, he's betraying them, even if it's for the sake of morality, or doing the right thing. Do you know what the opposite of Machiavelli is? George W. Bush. Someone who leads with their heart, instead of their brain. Also, many tyrants read it, but do you really think they'd be any different if they hadn't? I'm sure Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler would have been boy scouts otherwise.

Enough with the religious books. I'm not saying this out of religious beliefs, but for the most part, they're actually several books put together, written by many different people. Genesis and Leviticus have led to dangerous ignorance, sure, but you can't blame the bible as a whole for that. Also, the Koran actually helped promote peace for centuries, as it united tribes that until then never stopped fighting. It's only recently that everything has gone to hell as a result. Also, once again, do you really think there would be more peace in the world without these books? Religion is just their excuse for being horrible to each other. Without it, they'd just look for another excuse. It isn't really about religion, it's about limited resources and tribes.

I could probably make an exception for the book of Mormon though. It's made up, everyone knows it's made up, and countless murders and pre-pubecent brides are the main result.

I'm seconding Dianetics. What a dangerous load of crap.

I know it's meant as a joke, but the Davinci Code isn't a bad choice for the list. I know too many people that actually believed the facts were all true, and not something Dan Brown threw together off the top of his head.

As a final note, I'm not crazy about the #1 entry. It's nowhere as bad as the other books, I've only heard about it in passing, and it gives the impression that the list was only written so the author could dump on the book. Don't get me wrong, the book deserves it, but I think the author is overstating the importance of the book.

Interrupted Infinitum: "This article just reminded me that I need to go on a book run.
I am thinking some Huxley.
Any other suggestions?"

One of my personal favorites is A Canticle For Lebowitz. But if you are a Huxley fun... then nothing beats reading Brave New World or some Plato's The Analogy of the Cave... THEN watch THX 1138

yay

RadioactiveApe
Pivot of Civilization
the most urgent problem of to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective."

Now what's wrong with that idea? Because Nazis advocated it?

Nazis also built the autobahn and cheap reliable cars. And Hitler liked to paint. Is that evil too?

What's wrong with it is that nobody has the right to control another free adult's reproduction. Nobody has the right to force another free person to breed. Nobody has the right to restrict another free person from breeding.

The underlying wrong in Sanger's eugenics is the idea that the rights of the individual are secondary to the perceived interest of the state. This is a fundamentally authoritarian concept that has no place in egalitarian democracy.

Try reading Edwin Black's The War Against the Weak. There is no need to invoke Hitler to criticize Sanger. Sanger did enough harm on her own.

I'd count the Bible or Koran, but they're so far ahead of anything short of Mein Kumpf ,which may have been related to the thought process to send millions down the river, that no other book matters.

In the end even the entire Reichland had nothing on books that have caused the death of hundreds of millions and the poisoning of entire cultures. Think about that, the entire aparatus of a machine dedicated toward killing and destroying versus the contributions of the "holy" books alone.

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

Women who run with the Wolves.

Scifientologist

You, sir, are a buffoon!

Esc7: What a load of BS.

There are no dangerous books, only dangerous people.

You cannot blame blame opinions and lies written on a page for the actions of people who cause suffering.

Even if a book is 100% libel and slander created solely for the purpose to incite people to cause evil, people still need to do evil on their own accord. Anyone who can think rationally and critically can discredit false information and see ill informed opinions for what they are.

Mein Kampf is made up of ridiculous ramblings. Any sensible person can see it for what it is.

These works are not responsible for atrocity, the perpetrators of atrocity are. The second we start blaming books for actions of men we've taken the first step towards banning and burning thoughts and opinions, and we know where that path takes us.

This.

Crosshair: calbert: "The Communist Manifesto?"

I can tell you didn't RTFA. The Communist Manifesto is #2 on the list.

As for those who want to bash religion, the Koran belong on the list far more than the Bible.
I'm not sure how you justify the difference. They both deserve to be on the list.

ah3133: Unright: ah3133: an engineer can learn to cook ...
but can a cook learn to create new alloys?

/ rand 1, critics 0

Uh, yeah. A cook probably can if they apply themselves. Engineers aren't born with mysterious knowledge unavailable to the rest of the world.

yeah right when i look behind the counter at taco bell, i see the world's next great minds. if anyone could design a bridge, the engineers who design them would be making $5.85 an hour.

Well, to be fair nobody at Taco Bell actually cooks anything. They just kind of spend all day squeezing and pouring and microwaving and mixing shiat, but it's all precooked.

personally, i like them still mooing.

joshik72

Your picture literally made me bust out laughing. Thanks.

The Grinch: No matter what you think of Rand's philosophy, it's virtually certain you'll agree that that book was, at best, a major chore to read.

No matter what I think...you mean that she wanted nothing more than to be an indivuialist? Yawn..........

And yes, everything she wrote was the same drivel.....

Several readers in this thread (Farque Ewe and Alien Robot are jumping out at me) seem to be confusing Socialism with Bolshevism (or Leninism).

Marx and Engels advocated that value comes from the people whom actually produce things of value, and that as the holding and allocation of capital does not in and of itself create value, it should be eliminated from the economic system.

Bad economics? Yep. Evil? Please.

Now, Lenin, the founder of the USSR, said that while you want to achieve Marx and Engels's leaderless utopia, it cannot spontaneously generate. The proletariat are not sufficiently self-aware, and if left to their own devices, will slide back to being petit bourgeois. Thus, it is necessary to have a Party/State to guide the workers to the Socialist promised land, because if the poor dears were allowed to decide for themselves, they'd mess up this well thought out plan.

That's Leninism. If you want an evil rat bastard, that would be Lenin and everyone who followed him.

sumdumguy: Several readers in this thread (Farque Ewe and Alien Robot are jumping out at me) seem to be confusing Socialism with Bolshevism (or Leninism).

Marx and Engels advocated that value comes from the people whom actually produce things of value, and that as the holding and allocation of capital does not in and of itself create value, it should be eliminated from the economic system.

Bad economics? Yep. Evil? Please.

Now, Lenin, the founder of the USSR, said that while you want to achieve Marx and Engels's leaderless utopia, it cannot spontaneously generate. The proletariat are not sufficiently self-aware, and if left to their own devices, will slide back to being petit bourgeois. Thus, it is necessary to have a Party/State to guide the workers to the Socialist promised land, because if the poor dears were allowed to decide for themselves, they'd mess up this well thought out plan.

That's Leninism. If you want an evil rat bastard, that would be Lenin and everyone who followed him.

Whatever, pinko. Why don't you and your comrades take your "knowledge" and go back to the motherland.

randomstranger

Jeez, if you're going to troll at this hour, at least put in the barest minimum of effort.

Eh, it was an attempt at humor. I figured putting quotes around knowledge was the deal breaker, but I'll try harder next time.

I'd like to see one of "Top 10 Internet Lists that have a cranio-rectal inversion."

/Listverse = #1

randomstranger,

Eh, it was an attempt at humor. I figured putting quotes around knowledge was the deal breaker, but I'll try harder next time.

Yeah. I see it. The problem with humor in the sarcastic vein (of which I'm a practitioner and admirer of in real life) is that the numerous nonverbal cues which make it work IRL don't exist here.

Now go to bed. It's way too late.

mekki: Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone is saying the Bible is one of the missing books. But haven't you ever noticed that people who use the Bible as means to do harm usually have only read bits and parts of it and not the whole thing. They only pick and choose what suits them.

Like they use the Old Testament as way to prove that God hates gays but completely ignore the New Testament where Jesus says do unto others as you would have them do unto you and love your brother no matter if he is different from you as in the Good Samaritan parable.

The same can be said for The Quran and all other religious texts.

This list is for books that have been thoroughly read and digested and then used to do harm.


Of course the priests that like to fark little boys have only read bits and pieces.

I will add three of my favorite non-fiction books to the list. Not all of them are super heavy reading:

Ghost Wars-Steve Coll
How Soccer Explains the Universe
The Creature From Jeckyll Island