A conservative group has compiled a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The list:
1. Communist Manifesto
2. Mein Kampf
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao (The Little Red Book)
4. The Kinsey Report.
Just when I think I can see where the hardcore conservatives are coming from, they throw me a curveball. The first three, I can get on board with more or less — books that went hand-in-hand with state sponsored mass murders and oppression. But putting a book with a clinical review of human sexuality by an Indiana University professor right up there with books associated with Stalin, Hitler, and Mao just scrambles my brain.
The rest of the list:
5. Democracy and Education
6. Das Kapital
7. The Feminine Mystique
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy
9. Beyond Good and Evil
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
Honorable mentions go to, among others, “On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill; “the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin; and “Unsafe at any Speed” by Ralph Nader.
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