The 5 Worst Books I've Read

When I read a good book, I get so hype. It just puts me in a great mood. I feel like I'm learning and getting closer to what this life is really all about. So, you can understand how upset I get when I read a bad book. Here's a list of the five worst books I've read. I've posted about some of them on the blog before, so I'll post a link for a more in depth trashing. They are in order of when I read them.

1. Michael Parenti. To Kill a Nation: The Attack of Yugoslavia.
I bought this book (the only one on the list not fromt he library) because Parenti started by saying something to the effect of: I do not subscribe to the official version of history as presented by the United States government. I liked that. But the book is just a propaganda piece for the Serbian point of view. He denies the genocide against Bosnians. By the end of the book, Parenti is making a case that a genocide took place against Serbs. I've never seen a worse use of sources. He either uses sources from other secondary sources by authors who agree with him or New York Times articles that contradict his argument; but, he argues, it's the New York Times, so the opposite of what is written in it must be true. More at My Ass Burns.

2. Roy Morris Jr. Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876.
Morris portrays an America where roving gangs of black Republicans bully, intimidate, and beat up those poor southern Democrats, white and black alike. He meets every alleged black victim of white Democratic violence with skepticism and every accusation of fraud towards a Republican with certainty. According to Morris, every slanderous thing the Democratic newspapers say about Republicans is truth and every malicious thing the Republican newspapers say about Democrats is not only a lie, but also proof of Republican wrongdoing. More at A New Fraud.

3. David Hoile. Mozambique, resistance and freedom: A case for reassessment.
Hoile is pro-Renamo to the extreme. Even so, his book could still have merit, but he provides zero analysis about the civil war in Mozambique and fails to provide a coherent argument for Renamo's cause. Instead, his book is a random collection of nitpicky "corrections" of other scholarly works about Mozambique. At the time it was written, there was a debate about the origins of Renamo- whether it was a legitimate local manifestation of opposition to Frelimo or a creation of neighboring Apartheid states meant to destabilize the Frelimo government- but Hoile's argument on the topic is nothing short of silly and irrelevant.

4. Burton Kirkwood. The History of Mexico (2nd Edition).
As someone who didn't know too much about Mexico, I knew enough to point out several glaring errors in this book. The book possesses fuzzy math, confused verb tenses, and a repeating paragraph. More at Burton Kirkwood's Mistakes.

5. Robert Krueger and Kathleen Tobin Krueger. From Bloodshed to Hope in Burundi.
Robert Krueger is the former US ambassador to Burundi. He argues from a Hutu extremist point of view. The former president, Melchoir Ndadaye, a Hutu, is viewed as Martin Luther King and Gandhi, while another former president, Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, is another Hitler. The history between Tutsi and Hutu in Burundi is very complicated, with a lot of blame to go around. The Kruegers only focus on the atrocities committed by the Tutsi against the Hutu. In 1972, the Tutsi-led army attempted to kill every educated Hutu of a certain age. I had to read another book to learn that Hutu-led invasion of Tutsi preceded the horrific genocide because it's not even mentioned once by the Kruegers. Robert Krueger states that the French trained the (Hutu) perpetrators Rwandan genocide in one sentence (without condemnation) and then goes on lauding France for protecting the perpetrators after the genocide was over. I've read a few pro-Hutu sources, but the Kruegers are irresponsibly biased while presenting themselves as objective.

Oh lord was that cathartic.