Hacker News Reader

Comment by lemper | Hacker News Reader

Yes. I'd stock Koran too. Satanic Verses by Rushdie would also be included. If I can have access to Mein Kampf, to the library it goes.

View on HN

Unless you are specifically interested in the history of the response to the Satanic Verses and what it means about world society, I would recommend 'Midnight's Children' as a better book, and a better example of what is interesting about Salman Rushdie's work.

> Mein Kampf

While the author was very influential, I'm not sure if the book itself relevant.

Historically speaking, it is very relevant. Because it clearly shows Hitler's intent for Germany, the war and the jews way before he got into power. Other than that, it is a crappy book, the content sucks and the writing is abysmally bad. The latter fact was also something people thought back then, and most people who had the book at home didn't necessarily read it.

Another reason the book is relevant, it clearly shows the power of propaganda and how books can be used to that end.

> Because it clearly shows Hitler's intent for Germany, the war and the jews way before he got into power.

It's interesting from the perspective of historiography. But it's not relevant in the way the Bible, Quran or the Gita are.

> Other than that, it is a crappy book, the content sucks and the writing is abysmally bad. The latter fact was also something people thought back then, and most people who had the book at home didn't necessarily read it.

This was my point. And in the context of TFA, it's not Lindy.

> clearly shows the power of propaganda

It wasn't an effective instrument for propaganda. The book became popular because of Hitler, not the other way round.

"Mein Kampf" is actually a good example of the "negative" Lindy effect because it was only relevant in a single country for a very short time, and even in Nazi Germany it was only popular (in the sense that there was a copy in every household) because it was given out as wedding gift by the state (pretty much nobody could be arsed to actually buy and read that drivel when it came out).

This is historical revisionism. Mein Kampf was a decently well selling book even before the Nazis came to power, with an estimated number of 241000 copies sold.

This is of course dwarfed by the number of copies distributed after the Nazis came to power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com