Burn Them!

By Crispin Sartwell

 

The conservative magazine Human Events recently published a list of the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries, as selected by "a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders." It was a predictable list, including tomes by conservative betes noirs Marx, Keynes, Kinsey, and Freidan. It was also wildly inaccurate. Herewith, the real and true list, as compiled by a panel of dozens of important experts, all of them myself.

 

(1) A.A. Milne, "The House at Pooh Corner"

Charming. Yet in its slight insipidity lurked the horrific possibility of the Care Bears.

 

(2) Roger Tory Peterson, "A Field Guide to the Birds"

"Mein Kampf" for bird watchers.

 

(3) Lao Tzu, "Tao Te Ching"

This book was so destructive that it literally wasn't written in the 19th or 20th centuries.

 

(4) Crispin Sartwell, "The Art of Living"

No one ever read this book. But after it came out, the world continued to crumble into a meaningless nightmare of pain.

 

(5) James Joyce, "Ulysses"

Don't ever let anyone tell you that this is a good book.

 

(6) Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Sympathy for the Devil"

This book was literally so destructive it wasn't even a book.

 

(7) Irma Rombauer, "The Joy of Cooking"

My mother's "bible."

 

(8) novels

There were way too many novels in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

(9) Ken Bain, "What the Best College Teachers Do"

They subvert your children's intellects with a bunch of subversive blabber, that's what.

 

(10) J.K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"

First I had to read this twice to children. Then I dropped it on my foot and had to see the podiatrist.