50 People Who Messed Up the World
NGL I picked up this book because of how it looked. As a student of politics, I have always been fascinated by the cartoons that would come up in the newspaper that would satirically portray the truths of the society and government. So when I saw a book with cartoons, I thought why not! I looked at the index and the 50 people this author decided to include and thought “hmm you know what.. maybe this is just unconventional” and boy was I wrong.
The book includes names like Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, Hugo Chavez and also people like Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber in the same list??
At this point I would really like to point out the difference between ‘having a
harmless opinion about one’s taste in music’ and ‘wanting to kill an entire race of humans’. How and why, he thought it was appropriate (or even appealing?) to include them all in the list is way beyond my understanding.
I understand the approach of this book is to make it light for the readers to read about the terrible people who tried to destroy society, but using the same tone while talking about people whose level of atrocities were this different (eg. Osama bin Laden and Steven Spielberg) only goes to show how desensitized the readers have become to all the barbarism that is going on in the world. Why would he be so insensitive to these things if not to appeal his readers?
Oh and this is not the end of my rant. I was only 50 pages into the book, where the author takes the liberty of his position to criticise female tennis players because of how loud they grunt while playing?? There is an entire chapter where he goes on about how viewership in women’s tennis has declined over the years because the grunting has increased. Because of course, change in viewership of women’s tennis is only a product of the loudness of their grunt because societal, cultural and other economic factors make no difference, right?
And this isn’t even the only portrayal of ignorance (Mind you, I am only at page 58 of 320). In a chapter before this, he criticised a female Danish politician because according to him, she alone is responsible for making diesel cars mandatory in the European Union. Let me rephrase that; the male author thinks, a woman politician who rose through the ranks with little (basically zero) social capital is strong enough (in this patriarchal world) to make such a big institutional change alone. As much as I would like to believe that, blaming one woman in an entire institution who supported her policy is not cool. It is just a man blaming a woman (for something that any other man would have done in her position also) because it is easy and socially acceptable to do so.
I am open to listening different point of views. I am even okay if you say ‘you know what, I like patriarchy because its easier for me as a man’. But acting this ignorant and behaving like cultural and institutional factors just don’t exist is not okay with me. I don’t know who the target audience for this book is (actually wait, I do know- it is the white privileged males! Yay! Them again!) but if you believe in things like equality or think conserving the environment is an immediate need, this is probably not for you.
I stopped at page 58 and honestly feel like I have no incentive to go ahead with this book but I wanted to write this review to ask whoever is reading this, to maybe skip this one. I promise you won’t miss out on much!
I give this book
⭐