The title is certainly a good indication that it's probably pretty stupid. You must now provide details of the idiocy of the books mentioned in first post.
Yes I knew I was forgetting to do something...
How The Irish Saved Civilization: Written by a Jesuit 'historian' (he has a bibliography... practically all his sources are by Jesuits...) about how Irish Christianity helped keep alive the Classical tradition in the period laymen still refer to as the 'dark ages'. The thesis is historically dubious in itself (though admittely isn't
totally without merit), indeed it repeats practically all the long debunked myths about Irish history in that period (which is basicallly all Irish history in that period). But hum-ho, what makes it really stupid is his bizarre tendency to use events from the 5th Century to underline moral points about
today. The logic goes... The Huns were migrants to Western Europe, they destroyed 'Roman Civilization'
therefore illegal immigration is bad (Were the Huns illegal?). While this is a common trick of pop history, it doesn't mean it isn't offensive and moronic rubbish especially considering that this is actually a big selling book which is where alot of people learn about early Irish history. I'm surprised by the amount of people who have read it.
The Blank Slate: I've mentioned this one before. It is a written by an 'evolutionary psychologist' professor of linguistics at Harvard(? A major university in the US anyway... where do they hire these guys). Basically what Pinker does is attack, without doing any basic research beyond it seems barmat quotations of 'big thinkers', every single intellectual movement in the 20th Century (including some he plainly makes up) that doesn't agree with him... as they 'deny' 'human nature'. Human Nature seem to be a uniform, Clinton-era, ah shucks aren't humans just evil? type complacency mixed with the sort of neo-"darwinist" bollocks you occasionally find in business books about how entrepreneur's are trying to improve their evolutionary fitness and genes. Basically telling people what they want to hear but with new added 'science'. Because science explains everything, even if it isn't very scientific but hey that's the 'science'. It is the bizarrest example of anti-intellectualism I've ever read. The book sold millions of copies and Pinker has one of "the biggest brains on the planet" according to
The Sunday Times Brian Appelyard.
Oh yeah Samuel Huntingdon's book on the clash of civilizations was pretty bloody dumb.
