The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Posted on June 2, 2005

Thank goodness. Someone has finally had the courage to compile a list of The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Human Events assembled a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to compile the list. The voting process was complicated. Each panelist nominated a number of books, then listed them in order of how horrible and subversive they are. Any book listed as #1 got a score of 10 points, #2 got a score of 9 points etc. And the winners are:

1. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Publication date: 1848, Score: 74
2. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, Publication date: 1925-26, Score: 41
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao by Mao Zedong, Publication date: 1966, Score: 38
4. The Kinsey Report by Alfred Kinsey, Publication date: 1948, Score: 37
5. Democracy and Education by John Dewey, Publication date: 1916, Score: 36
6. Das Kapital by Karl Marx, Publication date: 1867-1894, Score: 31
7. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, Publication date: 1963, Score: 30
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy by Auguste Comte, Publication date: 1830-1842, Score: 28
9. Beyond Good and Evil by Freidrich Nietzsche, Publication date: 1886, Score: 28
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes, Publication date: 1936, Score: 23

These are really, really naughty books, and we don't want to see a single one of you reading any of them, or even reading the handy summaries provided by Human Events Online. We mean it -- just step away from that copy of Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money or we're calling the cops.