This book is a collection of essays written about authors that were assholes. At least that’s how most viewed them at the time. Maybe not you because you’re an asshole. That’s not the most descriptive word, but pain in the ass sounds like something my dad would say.
The selected authors wrote books that were largely ignored because they were assholes — there’s that word again — with asshole views. It was convenient and easy to dismiss their ideas during the time of publication. However, it has become very inconvenient for society that we have done so.
This book is not so much to honor or celebrate the contrarians — he didn’t say assholes — that question systems. It’s not a plaque on the wall for the one out of ten that asked, “but what if we’re wrong?” The point is to learn from our mistakes. Maybe you’re the asshole and you need to keep standing against the wheels of so-called progress. It is not easy to be run over by the machine and have your lifeless body dragged. More importantly, there are leaders out there surrounded by yes men and the safe protective shield of groupthink living in the short run, deciding in the short run. This book is for the leaders that will consider listening to the outcast, the troublemaker, the guy unofficially banned from the break room, or the woman that secretly everyone says represents all of the worst stereotypes about women.
Maybe you just want to read a book about I told you so and schadenfreude, if that's the case then that is in here. I too enjoy chaos amidst idiocy disguised as wisdom.
There is nothing new in this book. The authors are the creators and the real minds, and their books should be explored for the full experience. However, if you want a quicker and easier introduction to these works, then that is what I’m here for. I am just a lowly explainer in the eyes of G.H. Hardy (A Mathematician’s Apology), but who cares what a dead math teacher thinks, especially one that obsesses over the beauty of numbers. The same goes for the YouTube commentators that say, “just read the author, forget about this loser.” Maybe people don’t have time to read a 500 page economics book, but apparently that very obvious idea escapes the mind of the YouTube commenter — not surprising.
Nullius in Verba. That is the point.