Books You Should Not Read?

What do John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Auguste Comte, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Dewey, Margaret Mead, and Rachel Carson have in common with Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler? They all wrote what fifteen carefully chosen smart people think are among the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries. Some of those I listed were only honorable mentions, and presumably some have done more harm than others. Books like The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf are obvious choices, but it's nice to see The Origin of Species and Introduction to Psychoanalysis as well as Silent Spring and On Liberty given some credit. Someone even nominated Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed. Now there is a book that did some harm, especially to General Motors, not to mention the fallout years later for Al Gore. Of course, it's doubtful that any of these books or authors will do much harm in the 21st century, since I seriously doubt anyone reads them anymore.

Or wait a minute. I just realized I've been had. This must be an experiment in reverse psychology. What these guys want us to do is read these old books, so they've put them on a list of proscribed books that have done harm in the past and might still be harmful. Well, much as we seem to like things that are harmful to us, like smoking and drinking and eating beefsteak, I still don't think this is going to work.