Listen free for 30 days

  • 10 Books That Screwed Up the World

  • And 5 Others That Didn't Help
  • Written by: Benjamin Wiker
  • Narrated by: Robertson Dean
  • Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (11 ratings)

Try for $0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
10 Books That Screwed Up the World cover art

10 Books That Screwed Up the World

Written by: Benjamin Wiker
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $18.92

Buy Now for $18.92

Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

You've heard of the "Great Books"? These are their evil opposites.

From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, these "influential" books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, family breakdown, and disastrous social experiments. And yet these authors' bad ideas are still popular and pervasive; in fact, they might influence your own thinking without your realizing it.

Here with the antidote is Professor Benjamin Wiker. In this scintillating new book, he seizes each of these evil books by its malignant heart and exposes it to the light of day. You'll learn:

  • Why Machiavelli's The Prince was the inspiration for a long list of tyrannies (Stalin had it on his nightstand)
  • How Descartes's Discourse on Method "proved" God's existence only by making Him a creation of our own ego
  • How Hobbes's Leviathan led to the belief that we have a "right" to whatever we want
  • Why Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto could win the award for the most malicious book ever written
  • How Darwin's Descent of Man proves he intended "survival of the fittest" to be applied to human society
  • How Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil issued the call for a world ruled solely by the "will to power"
  • How Hitler's Mein Kampf was a kind of "spiritualized Darwinism" that accounts for his genocidal anti-Semitism
  • How the pansexual paradise described in Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa turned out to be a creation of her own sexual confusions and aspirations
  • Why Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was simply autobiography masquerading as science

    Witty, shocking, and instructive, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World offers a quick education on the worst ideas in human history and how we can avoid them in the future.

    •
    ©2008 Benjamin Wiker (P)2008 Tantor
    Ideologies & Doctrines Politics & Government Literature & Fiction Education & Learning Writing, Research & Publishing Guides
    Show more Show less

    What listeners say about 10 Books That Screwed Up the World

    Average Customer Ratings
    Overall
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars
    • 5 Stars
      9
    • 4 Stars
      1
    • 3 Stars
      0
    • 2 Stars
      1
    • 1 Stars
      0
    Performance
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars
    • 5 Stars
      8
    • 4 Stars
      1
    • 3 Stars
      1
    • 2 Stars
      0
    • 1 Stars
      0
    Story
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars
    • 5 Stars
      9
    • 4 Stars
      0
    • 3 Stars
      0
    • 2 Stars
      1
    • 1 Stars
      0

    Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

    Audible.ca reviews

    Amazon Reviews
    No reviews are available