# Best and Worst Books of the Century **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 4, 1999, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081 "1999-12-04T00:28:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/1 "1999-12-04T00:28:00Z")
So the [Intercollegiate Studies Institute](http://www.isi.org) has issued a list of the fifty best and worst books of the century. Here is a press release about it, printed in it’s entirety. > [@](#): > > College Students Likely to Read Century’s Worst Books; Worst Books Best Known > On Campus; New 50/50 Lists from ISI Reveal Worst and Best Books of the Century > > ``` > WILMINGTON, Del., Dec. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Why are today's college students reading more but learning less? Because they're reading some of the worst books written this century, according to a panel of experts assembled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). New lists of the fifty worst and best books of the twentieth century reveal titles that are still popular nationwide even though scholars now acknowledge profound flaws in their ideas. > > ``` > > The lists appear in the Fall 1999 issue of The Intercollegiate Review, a journal of opinion and scholarship with a circulation of 50,000. That the list of the worst books contains many chic titles is reflected in the Wall Street Journal’s comment on ISI’s list. After noting the presence of such embarrassments as Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” (1958), Jonathan Schell’s “The Fate of the Earth” (1982), and John Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice” (1971), the Journal asks: “Think the Intercollegiate Review folks > have merely reproduced the Al Gore library?” > > Only non-fiction works published originally in English were considered. Leading the list of the very worst books of the century is Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa,” summed up by the experts: “So amusing did the natives find the white woman’s prurient questions that they told her the wildest tales – and she believed them! Mead misled a generation into believing that the fantasies of sexual progressives were an historical reality on an island far, far away.” Others making the infamous top five list are Beatrice & Sidney Webb, “Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?,” a defense of the USSR that was eagerly adopted by the academic smart set; Alfred Kinsey, et al., “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” which, despite Kinsey’s profound personal problems, is still taken seriously by sexologists; “One-Dimensional Man” by Herbert Marcuse, an apologist for totalitarianism now au courant on campuses nationwide; and John Dewey, “Democracy and Education,” a work that laid the intellectual foundation of our failing public educational establishment. > > ``` > Making the best list's top five are: Henry Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams"; C.S. Lewis, "The Abolition of Man"; Whittaker Chambers, "Witness"; T.S. Eliot, "Selected Essays, 1917 - 1932"; and Arnold Toynbee's "A Study of History." Other winners include Shelby Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative"; Booker T. Washington, "Up From Slavery"; H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices"; Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"; Will Herberg, "Protestant, Catholic, Jew"; John Keegan, "The Face of Battle"; and many more. > > For more information on what media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and NationalReview.com are talking about, download the lists at isi.org, or for copies or more information contact (name and number redacted by **manhattan**. > > ``` Here are direct links to the [Best[/url"] and [url=http://www.isi.org/publications/ir/50worst.html]Worst](http://www.isi.org/publications/ir/50best.html) books. Any thoughts? And while we’re on the subject, I’ve been out of academia for a while. Do I care who the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is? * * * Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/2 "1999-12-04T00:30:00Z")
Dammit. Best: [http://www.isi.org/publications/ir/50best.html](http://www.isi.org/publications/ir/50best.html) Worst: [http://www.isi.org/publications/ir/50worst.html](http://www.isi.org/publications/ir/50worst.html) ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/3 "1999-12-04T00:50:00Z")
I think their point of view is pretty clear from their web page: > [@](#): > > To accomplish this goal, ISI seeks to enhance the rising generation’s knowledge of our nation’s founding principles – limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise, and Judeo-Christian moral standards. Third on their list of the worst books (non-fiction books, written in english) of the century is > [@](#): > > 1. Alfred Kinsey, et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) > So mesmerized were Americans by the authority of Science, with a capital S, that it took forty years for anyone to wonder how data is gathered on the sexual responses of children as young as five. A pervert’s attempt to demonstrate that perversion is “statistically” normal. I think they were overly influenced by their “mission statement” when making up their lists. * * * La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit. H. de Livry ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/4 "1999-12-04T00:55:00Z")
I agree with you there, Jacques. This seems to be an extremely biased list. Of course all these lists, the top movies of the century, the other book lists, etc., are totally subjective. This one’s a little worse than most, but personally, I’m sick of the lot. -andros- ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/5 "1999-12-04T01:37:00Z")
No kidding. Hal Lindsey’s _The Late, Great Planet Earth_, and its sequel, _The '80s: Countdown to Armageddon_ were every bit as bad, if not worse, than such “prophetic” works on their worst-50 list as _The Population Bomb_, and yet Lindsey’s works didn’t appear on that list. I am absolutely certain that this is because his works were of a biblical nature, and were therefore considered “beyond reproach” by this decidedly Xian group. (And besides, their worst 50 list didn’t include _Silent Spring_ or _Bankruptcy 1995_, so how good can it be? 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/6 "1999-12-04T01:38:00Z")
> [@](#): > > This seems to be an extremely biased list. Gee, what tipped you off – their statement that the title of “The Abolition of Man” sums up the liberal agenda? ---
**Author:** ![Sake\_Samurai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sake\_Samurai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sake_Samurai)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/7 "1999-12-04T01:47:00Z")
I **really** hate lists for the following reasons: 1. They always follow an agenda. 2. Lists are usually decided upon by a statistically insignificant group. 3. They try to mask their subjectivity by putting on airs of empirical objectivity. 4. They are so anally ordered it really makes one wonder. * * * Hell is Other People. ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/8 "1999-12-04T03:32:00Z")
Not to mention that they take as settled a criticism concerning the work of Margaret Mead that is still very much in progress, and whose premises appear to based on some very dubious “evidence.” * * * "I prefer shows of the genre, _“World’s Blankiest Blank.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Spiritus\_Mundi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c68b51/32.png) [@Spiritus\_Mundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiritus_Mundi)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 1999, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/9 "1999-12-04T08:20:00Z")
Besides, I am absolutely certain that the worst book of this century has Fabio on the cover. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 1999, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/10 "1999-12-05T06:47:00Z")
I’m a bit troubled by the mathematical implications I found in the lists, compiled by “experts” on behalf of an entity that claims to be an “educational organization.” To wit: the presence of _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ on the list of the 50 best _and_ the 50 worst books of the twentieth century leads one inescapably to the conclusion that there have been exactly 99 non-fiction works published (in English) during the twentieth century. I base this on the fact that _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ is the only book to appear on both lists. I don’t have accurate numbers in front of me, but I suspect that this is a tad low. Or perhaps Unca Cecil’s books were originally published either in a different language or during a different century. ---
**Author:** ![WallyM7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5e925/32.png) [@WallyM7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WallyM7)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 1999, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/11 "1999-12-05T01:10:00Z")
Best book: “Eternally Yours for Now” - A Harlequin Romance. Worst book: (three way tie) 1. To Kill a Mockingbird. 2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 3. The Grapes of Wrath. * * * This space for rent. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Ryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7feea3/32.png) [@The\_Ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Ryan)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 1999, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/12 "1999-12-05T03:39:00Z")
Is their take on Kinsey biased? From what I’ve heard, he did have rather loose standards of evidence. But a view that did surprise me: > [@](#): > > The Pentagon Papers as Published by the New York Times, Based on Investigative Reporting by Neil Sheehan (1971) > Publicizing the blunderings of “the Best and the Brightest” did nothing but undermine the new President’s—Nixon’s—statesmanlike efforts to salvage the mess in Vietnam bequeathed to him by JFK and LBJ. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 1999, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/13 "1999-12-05T12:31:00Z")
Although the 50 Best and 50 Worst lists are obviously created by someone with a clear conservative bias, there are a number of books on the 50 Best list that wouldn’t bother a liberal that much. The books by Adams, Lewis, Eliot, Arendt, Brooks & Warren, Chesterton, Coppleston, Dawson, Foote, Genovese, Jacobs, Lovejoy, Merton, Niebuhr, O’Connor, Orwell, Percy, Santayana, Strunk & White, Turner, Trilling, Turner, Washington, Watson, Wilson, Wittengenstein, and Malcolm X all have some fans among liberals. Friedman, Von Hayek, and Schumpeter are generally considered among liberals to be conservative economic ideologues who’ve biased their theories to fit their pre-existing ideas. Although I don’t think that very many liberals would consider _Witness_ to be an important book, there has been a trend among liberals recently to give Chambers more credit. The general feeling is that Toynbee and Johnson try too hard to make their theories of history fit and end up stretching the facts. Most of the rest of the books on the 50 Best list are usually considered by liberals to be not very important or obviously slanted. Incidentally, do the writers of this list really want to push H. L. Mencken as a model for modern conservatives? Mencken was usually considered a liberal during his lifetime, mostly because of his criticisms of fundamentalists. The facy is though that he thought he was better than anyone else. He also made fun of women, Jews, and blacks. He despised the entire human race. He’s one of those people who sound great in single-sentence quotes but bad at longer lengths. The 50 Worst list has bigger problems. It seems likely now that Meade did try too hard to make the data fit her pre-existing theories, but she wasn’t lying about anything. It also seems that her informants were making stuff up just to fool her. But this doesn’t disprove her theories. It just means that someone less easily fooled will have redo all her research before anything can be said one way or another. Pretty much everybody now agrees that Kinsey’s surveys don’t meet modern scientific standards. Before him though no one was even trying to do scientific studies of sexual behavior. There’s also a majority view among liberals (if not quite a general agreement) that Bernal tries too hard to find evidence of Egyptian influence on Greeks and African influence on Egyptians. What’s more, unlike Meade and Kinsey, Bernal never had a significant period of being considered a top-notch, significant researcher among liberals. I’m surprised that the list doesn’t include any of Freud’s works. Most liberals now consider that Freud’s theories are weak and that his data is biased. Given that nobody has taken the Webbs’s book or its viewpoint seriously in at least forty years, including it on the list seems awfully picky. I think the same thing can be said of the Leary, the Charles Reich, the Wilheim Reich, and the Rubin books, which nobody ever took very seriously. You would get the idea from their comments on the books that they believe that liberals all agree on a single agenda and push this agenda in their books. But notice that they include both one of Chomsky’s books and _Beyond Freedom and Dignity_, which Chomsky utterly trashed in a famous review. I think that for the makers of these lists liberalism is some big undifferentiated mass of opinions that they can’t be bothered to sort through. Their complaints about the Galbraith, the Keynes, and the Patten books are the reverse of their comments about the Friedman, Von Hayek, and Schumpeter books. They like economists whose theories are biased toward their opinions and they dislike ones who are biased against their opinions. Their comment on _Soul on Ice_ is simply a lie. Cleaver was a rapist (and spent years in jail for it). He wasn’t a murderer. The whole point of his book was his realization that he can’t take revenge against the world for what it had done to him. Cleaver’s entire life was confused - he was a drug dealer, then a rapist, then a convict mad at the whole world, then a follower of Gandhi, then a political writer, then a Black Panther, then an exile looking for answers, then a born-again Christian, then a Mormon, and then I gave up trying to follow his political and philosophical twists. You can argue that he didn’t live up to his ideals. Maybe you can argue that no one can live up to his ideals. But the fact is that the ideals he expouses in _Soul on Ice_ are important. The criticism of _The Secular City_ is also ridiculous. They seem baffled that Harvey Cox refused to move to the suburbs along with them. They can’t understand how anyone would want to live with blacks and poor people. The Hiss book never influenced anybody. By 1988 the tide of opinion was already turning away from him. _Profiles in Courage_: Let’s see - the handsome son of a rich man wrote (with some ghost-writing help) a not particularly good book, which won, probably undeserved, a Pulitzer. He had very slightly liberal opinions. He spent three terms in the House, a term and a third in the Senate, and was elected President. He was neither particularly good nor particularly bad in those offices. His father’s money may have helped his campaigns, but it’s unlikely that his book had much to do with it. The book is now mostly unread. In other words, John Kennedy is a liberal version of Dan Quayle, plus 30 extra I.Q. points. They don’t even try to deny that the Pentagon Papers tell the truth. They just complain that it ended up annoying a President they like instead of two Presidents that they didn’t like. Their inclusion of the Malcolm X book on both lists shows the problems with any such lists. Most books contain large amounts of both good and bad things. A few contain both brilliant expositions of the truth and bizarrely confused nonsense. The notion that you can separate all books into two lists of good books and bad books is absurd. The only real use of a list of recommended books that someone gives you is to add it to all the other lists as just one more viewpoint. Liberals write just as much nonsense as conservatives, but they don’t find it necessary to act as if there’s an unchangable canon of great books. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 1999, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/14 "1999-12-05T20:11:00Z")
Some additions and corrections to my last post: Of course they don’t include any Freud. They limit themselves to non-fiction works in English. How interesting that they include biographies of two defenders of slavery, Jefferson and Lee (and, yes, of one former slave, Washington). So they consider Robert E. Lee a “great Southern traditionalist”, not someone who took on a bad cause. And how interesting that they think that the designing of the atomic bomb is the high point of American civilization. They include _The Right Stuff_. I haven’t read this book. Is it as biased as the movie? I disliked the movie because it just stuck to the notion that many people have that the astronauts were everything in the space program, while the scientists and politicians were miserable slime who interfered with the heroic astronauts. In other words, if you’re handsome, athletic, and fairly smart, you can become an astronaut, who are godlike beings, while if you’re merely smart and become a scientist, you’re worthless garbage. The treatment of Johnson and (to a lesser degree) Eisenhower is despicable too. The film treats Kennedy nicer than he deserves though. What the movie is saying is that all politicians are slime, except handsome ones like Kennedy. In the third paragraph of my last post, I should have started the third sentence with “The fact is though that . . .” Also, Margaret Mead’s name is spelled “Mead”, not “Meade”, of course. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 1999, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/15 "1999-12-05T23:13:00Z")
It’s kinda funny, I’ll bet the people at ISI make jokes about ‘politically correct’ types, without any idea that they’re exactly what they ridicule. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 1999, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/16 "1999-12-07T03:10:00Z")
The site says of _The Right Stuff_: > [@](#): > > The dazzling story of the test pilots and Mercury astronauts is narrated by Wolfe as a compelling affirmation of the American spirit and traditional values. You see, Wendell, of _course_ scientists are worthless slimebags. They’re all out to promote their atheistic satanic evilutionist [TM] agenda, whose sole purpose is to Take God Out Of The Schools. If God had meant for Man to use his brain, He wouldn’t’ve given us schoolmasters who thwack our knuckles whenever we point out a contradiction in the Holy Bible. ---
**Author:** ![Yossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/9de0a6/32.png) [@Yossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yossarian)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 1999, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/17 "1999-12-07T03:25:00Z")
That’s right! Every day, I go to work and pry into the secrets of rocks… Of course, I ignore all the overwhelming evidence I find to support creationism, like secret messages from God etched onto tiny grains of feldspar! Instead, I distort my data in order to distract the unsuspecting public and win more souls for my sweet lord Satan. I will agree with one of the top 5 “best”: Toynbee’s “Study of History”. Your Professional Evilutionist, Pantellerite, Minion of Lord Satan and His Deceptions. ---
**Author:** ![Phaedrus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@Phaedrus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phaedrus)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 1999, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/18 "1999-12-07T06:00:00Z")
Pantellerite: Am I not supposed to be able to guess who you really are? Too obvious to mention. 😉 However would the originator of this thread agree that the novel, “And the Band Played on” was one of the best books? 😉 😉 😉 😉 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Yossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/9de0a6/32.png) [@Yossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yossarian)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 1999, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/19 "1999-12-07T14:23:00Z")
Obvious to you, maybe. Go ahead and guess away; I’m dying to find out who I am! ---
**Author:** ![Rousseau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Rousseau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rousseau)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 1999, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081/20 "1999-12-07T22:18:00Z")
Worst: _A Brief History of Time_, by Steven Hawking. Oh, wait… [QUOTEThey limit themselves to non-fiction works in English.[/QUOTE] It fails on both counts. Oh, well… Best: The Kenneth Starr Report. Classic, baby, classic. * * * The IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the group. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-and-worst-books-of-the-century/17081.md?page=2)