In my view, the argument of The End Of History holds up pretty well.

The Bible.

Sorry, had to do it.

Ooh, I like the idea. In no order, here are some of my picks:

1. Charles Murray, Losing Ground
2. Hayek, Road to Serfdom
3. Glassman and Hasset, Dow 36,000
4. Von Mises, Theory of Money and Credit
5. The Negro Family, Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I'll think of some more.

I think Mao doesn't quite qualify, as his writings were more on political philosophy than social policy or economics.

Before "The Bell Curve" there was Edward O. Wilson's "Sociobiology."

More specifically, Arthur Jensen's 1969 article (not technically a book, but influential nonetheless) "How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Scholastic Achievement?" was a direct influence on the "The Bell Curve" and almost all work in the staggeringly wrongheaded study of the inheritability of "intelligence." Actually, it all goes back to the works of Cyril Burt, who performed the first "twin studies" purporting to show genetic determination in intelligence, and the inherent racial differences in same. Burt, it later turned out, fabricated most if not all of his data. You can't get more wrong than that.

There are a ton of race books and sociobiology from the 19th century that would count.

Also, books on criminology have been a great way to make the world worse...(betcha Jeremy Bentham would have been shocked at what people made of his ideas)

Tons of books on topics that are "good ideas but humans will never do it right" such as eugenics or population control. (malthous, erlich)

There are various books on medicines in past centuries that were based on popular quakery.

Anything.by.L.Ron.Hubbard.

Jude Wanniski, How the World Works
Ayn Rand: most of what she wrote
Allan Bloom: Closing of the American Mind
Enoch Powell: "Rivers of Blood" speech
Katie Roiphe: Morning After
Milton Friedman: Capitalism and Freedom, Free to Choose
Glassman and Hasset: Dow 36,000

A special case is Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom. That book's central argument (communism must always end up authoritarian) was not wrong, but the inferences usually drawn on it (all government intervention = bad) definitely was.

Not really fair to include Mao, since I don't know of any society that accepted his writings *after* a free and open debate.

Dibs on Atlas Shrugged!

How about Lexus and the Olive Tree? Israel, Georgia, Lebanon and Russian all have McDonalds.

There are various books on medicines in past centuries that were based on popular quakery.

(No offense intended. I was born and raised Quaker. The older generations of my family are all still Quaker.)

Ezra, I'd not go with either Marx or Mao. Mao was pretty terrible, but his work was actually not followed by himself. The cultural revolution was in direct conflict with everythin Mao had ever said before.

Also, I doubt Marx. Sure, some of it was problematic, but a lot of social democratic theory depends upon either Marx, or at least the history of struggles initiated by communism.

I would go with Lenin. Particularly, "The State and Revolution", which more than Marx ever came close to, justified the totalitarian excess of soviet socialism (and also maoist socialism, too).

Before "The Bell Curve" there was Edward O. Wilson's "Sociobiology."

Opposition to Wilson's "Sociobiology", a seminal scientific work, was a classic case of overreach by the radical left. Radical-left academics (mostly from the humanities) led a shameful witch-hunt against Wilson, a respected scientist, for a thought crime: the idea that biological principles have important implications for human behavior. This idea was anethema to Marxist doctrine, which purported that humans were a "blank slate" that could be reshaped arbitrarily. In this, as in many other things, Marxist doctrine was utterly mistaken, and Wilson's idea has blossomed into the modern scientific field of evolutionary psychology.

All in all, this was one of those moments that the left should not revisit, except in shame.

10 most influential and bad/wrong? Do we need a separate list for Tom Friedman?

As for "influential," if you define it within certain spheres, you could probably include Lacan's Ecrits (and all of Freud) and just about any of Foucault's major works. IIRC, a lot of Margaret Mead's work has been called into question, and Coming of Age in Samoa was (and remains) massively influential.

maybe Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow?

The combined writings of faculty and students of the University of Chicago School of Economics

Reisner's Cadillac Desert. It was accurate when it was written twenty years ago, but has the interesting distinction of having made itself wrong.

But is Cadillac Desert really damaging in the way that Rand/Marx/Murray have been? The worst you get out of Cadillac Desert is a sense that water projects are really messy and often not useful, and have screwed over a lot of people & places. That's kind of historically true, as far as I know (though I'm willing to hear arguments otherwise).

Terrible books in social policy: mine are already taken.

You're right that the danger has been localized to water policy. And, I think the book did a lot of good when it came out. But now that the movement it engendered has corrected a lot of the outrages it describes, the simplistic viewpoint from CD isn't helpful and sucks up most laypeople's attention.

Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius (and several others) -- the man who named and popularized eugenics, which became a respectable cover for classism and racism for about half a century and has never really gone away.

Rousseau's Emile?

Principia Mathematica.

I am not sure either of them are particularly what we would think of for economics, but any reader would clearly realize that the economic stakes certainly were never far from the work of these two thinks:

Leo Strauss. Whose work is the strong intellectual current behind so much neo-conservatism, both in domestic policy and foreign policy.

The other, of course, would be Carl Schmitt. A strong thinker who judicial philosophy helped shape both the Nazi era, and our time period of "the decider."

Those who nominated "The Bell Curve" or "Sociobiology" really should read "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker.

I nominate Thomas Malthus' The Principle of Population. Arithmetic vs Geometric growth curves. Yeah, that one didn't work out so much.

justawriter--
The combined writings of faculty and students of the University of Chicago School of Economics
'Struth!

Also, anything by George Gilder. Supply-side economics, intelligent design,the end of racism in America-- the guy could slather intellectual lacquer over any old pile of shit.

Can we nominate Ayn Rand for a lifetime achievement award?

Dual categories, bad prose and horrendous logic.

Jonnan

-Plato's Republic
-The Laws of Manu
-Hobbes' Leviathan

Actually Marx' Grundrisse which of cousre no communist has ever read was one of the finest works of the 19th century. And so is "Das Kapital" though there ceratinly are a lot of mistakes in it.

I would put Malthus on top of the list. Although the opposite of his population theory is true, still many refer to him.