Books like Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

I tend to enjoy most books I read (easily entertained, I guess), but don't let my low book standards detract from my statement that this is one of the best books I've ever read. While it appears to be a book on child-raising (and sort of is), I'd recommend it to anyone, parent or not. The author is clearly brilliant, but he's also hilarious. Several times throughout the book he'd make a joke (in a very intellectual and sarcastic manner) and I'd have to read it again just to convince myself -- did he really just SAY that? The book is offered in the style of "The Screwtape Letters," written as an advice manual for adults who want only to subdue children and suppress their naturally wild imaginations and creative inclinations. And while I'd recommend this book to anyone, it's a MUST-read for any parent, in my opinion. While I'd already given thought to many of his points (less television, more outside time, encouraging imagination, etc), I hadn't thought about them in the way he presents them, and hadn't thought of many of the pro-imagination approaches he suggests. I seriously can't and don't want to stop thinking about this book. Just so you get an idea of the content of the book, along with a tiny taste of his humor, here are the ten ways (each is given a chapter): Method 1: Keep Your Children Indoors as Much as Possible (or They Used to Call It "Air")Method 2: Never Leave Children to Themselves (or If Only We Had a Committee)Method 3: Keep Children Away from Machines and Machinists (or All Unauthorized Personnel Prohibited)Method 4: Replace the Fairy Tale with Political Clichés and Fads (or Vote Early and Often)Method 5: Cast Aspersions upon the Heroic and Patriotic (or We Are All Traitors Now)Method 6: Cut All Heroes Down to Size (or Pottering with the Puny)Method 7: Reduce All Talk of Love to Narcissism and Sex (or Insert Tab A into Slot B)Method 8: Level Distinctions between Man and Woman (or Spay and Geld)Method 9: Distract the Child with the Shallow and Unreal (or The Kingdom of Noise)Method 10: Deny the Transcendent (or Fix Above the Heads of Men the Lowest Ceiling of All)Lastly, a warning: Esolen references a LOT of other books in his own, as recommended reading, and as examples of those whose imaginations have NOT been stifled, so I must add that when you finish this book, you will probably have discovered 50 more that you want to start. But that's not really so bad, is it?