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Message: [QUOTE="Android 18, post: 190474, member: 166776"] The thing with Mein Kampf is that there is little to gain from reading it in full, outside of close academic study - the key tenets of Hitler are very clear and obvious from the first three pages, with little new information OR prose, as he was infamously a poor writer from both intellectual and creative lenses. You would become far smarter after reading a selection of passages with a good teacher than you would be after reading the entire book: the book is an incoherent collection of rambling and ravings that are not only highly repetitive, they become actively useless to read after a while because you’re seeing the manifesto of syphilis and meth addiction. In short, to understand the guy you can pretty much take the previous 80 years of commentary at face value - much more is to be gained from reading commentary on him & Nazism than Mein Kampf. I think a lot of people get this idea that in order to be smart and cultured, they have to read every historically important work they’ve ever heard of. That is not the case. Being smart and literate is also about being selective with what you take in, and choosing when it is better to take in the body of criticism about a topic rather than engaging with the root work. Selectivity is a foundation of creativity! [/QUOTE]

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