Killer Book about Books that Kill...

My review of 10 Books That Screwed Up the Word: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing House, 2008) by Benjamin Wiker

Ideas have consequences; therefore, bad ideas published in books can have bad consequences for generations. Benjamin Wiker, working off of this general thesis in 10 Books That Screwed Up the Word: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing House, 2008), offers a thoughtful critique on ten of the books that laid the philosophical foundations for the ideologies, which made the 20th century the bloodiest century in all of history.

Wiker, in 10 Books That Screwed Up the World, insightfully demonstrates the influence of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men) had upon Karl Marx (The Communist Manifesto). According to Wiker:

If we think back over Rousseau, we realize that Marx merely turned Rousseau on his head. Rousseau put an entirely fictional state of nature at the beginning of human history, a state in which there was magically no conflict, no private property, plenty for everyone, no family ties, and free sexual access to any woman. Marx puts his entirely fictional state of frictionless bliss at the end, just beyond the great revolutionary conflagration….Marx envisioned a misty and impossible goal and set it just beyond the reach of his devotees who were desperate enough…or foolish enough…to believe the fantasy as fact (70).
The Communist Manifesto ultimately set forth a 20th century ideology that costs about 100,000,000 lives. Wiker also points out the influence of Charles Darwin (Descent of Man) on Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf), the latter giving rise to the National Socialist Party’s application of the Darwinian theory on the preservation of the fittest species by the elimination of inferior species—the systematic murder of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, prisoners of war, the handicapped, retarded, etc. The elimination of the inferior species would end with the survival of the superior species.

10 Books That Screwed Up the Word is insightful, thought provoking, and a recommended read for Christians. It offers a helpful analysis on the context out of which each author forged his/her ideas into books, and the way their ideas influenced generations of readers to wreak havoc on society.

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