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The Tuttle Twins Guide to the World's Worst Ideas
Throughout history, some ideas have been hailed as visionary, only to leave destruction and despair in their wake. What happens when the schemes of politicians, economists, and intellectuals go horribly wrong?
In this eye-opening guide, you’ll uncover the world’s worst ideas—concepts that are championed by powerful people past and present. From economic policies that led to poverty and ruin to social experiments that tore communities apart, these are not mere mistakes but catastrophic failures that have reshaped our world in devastating ways.
This book serves as a stark warning of the dangers of unchecked power and the hubris of those who believe they know what’s best for everyone else. By learning about these dark chapters of history and how pervasive these ideas are today, you will be empowered to think critically, to challenge the status quo, and to never take the promises of those in power at face value.
In this eye-opening guide, you’ll uncover the world’s worst ideas—concepts that are championed by powerful people past and present. From economic policies that led to poverty and ruin to social experiments that tore communities apart, these are not mere mistakes but catastrophic failures that have reshaped our world in devastating ways.
This book serves as a stark warning of the dangers of unchecked power and the hubris of those who believe they know what’s best for everyone else. By learning about these dark chapters of history and how pervasive these ideas are today, you will be empowered to think critically, to challenge the status quo, and to never take the promises of those in power at face value.
299 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2025
About the author
Connor Boyack
95 books272 followersConnor Boyack is founder and president of Libertas Institute, a libertarian think tank in Utah. In that capacity, he has spearheaded important policy reforms dealing with property rights, civil liberties, transparency, surveillance, and education freedom.
Connor is the author of several books, including the new Tuttle Twins series that teaches the principles of liberty to young children. Other books include Latter-day Liberty: A Gospel Approach to Government and Politics and its companion, Latter-day Responsibility: Choosing Liberty through Personal Accountability.
Connor's work has been publicly praised by former Representative Ron Paul, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Tom Woods, and other nationally recognized figures. He is a frequent commentator on current events and has appeared in local, national, and international interviews to publicize and comment on his work.
Connor is the author of several books, including the new Tuttle Twins series that teaches the principles of liberty to young children. Other books include Latter-day Liberty: A Gospel Approach to Government and Politics and its companion, Latter-day Responsibility: Choosing Liberty through Personal Accountability.
Connor's work has been publicly praised by former Representative Ron Paul, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Tom Woods, and other nationally recognized figures. He is a frequent commentator on current events and has appeared in local, national, and international interviews to publicize and comment on his work.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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October 19, 2025I'm not gonna rate this since it's a nonfiction! but I read this for school, and I was quite bored, but I learned ALOT!! So that's great!
July 10, 2026
I had high hopes for this book, especially after really enjoying the Tuttle Twins Guide to Logical Fallacies, which really helped me understand the concepts in a good introductory way. The goal of much of my reading in the past year has been evaluating books for potential addition to our children’s home library. There is no need for this book to grace our doorstep again.
This book feels quite different than the Tuttle Twins picture books and Logical Fallacies. The characterization of the Twins is a fantastic vehicle for personalizing and contextualizing complex ideas for young minds, especially as they are used as examples exploring those ideas in hypothetical situations. In this book, the Twins are a complete afterthought, with the author’s voice being the primary driver of every paragraph. There is a five-bullet point summary at the end of each chapter listed as Tuttle Twins Takeaways, but these bullet points are also strongly written within the author’s voice. At no point did this feel like two teenage characters guiding the reader through a feast of ideas. I felt like I was sitting across a cafe table from the author himself stating his own, often strong, opinions.
The tone of this book initially sets itself up like this is a book full of facts that will help you inform your opinions on the topics selected, but instead, it reads as a mini lecture of the author’s opinions without supporting evidence as demonstrated in the other Tuttle Twins books I have enjoyed. I shall clarify what I mean by this point. In the picture books, it is clear that the story is paraphrasing main ideas from a certain economist or philosopher of renown and their particular impactful writing on the topic (taking Bastiat’s The Law and making it relatable through the Twins’ adventures, but it is directly referencing Bastiat himself and makes it clear that The Law is the source of the main ideas demonstrated through the Twins’ fictional story). In this book, I was expecting a more in depth version of this same format: taking the robust ideas of well known and named people, contextualizing their ideas, and then expounding on them to understand application to real world scenarios. However, in the rare case that anyone’s name is mentioned, nothing of the sort occurs. This book completely lacks proper citations, and especially when quoting large bodies of text clearly taken from elsewhere, nothing has an end note or anything to indicate where those statements came from. According to my well-drilled high school lessons on citing your work if the idea or data point did not pop into your own head under your own direct observation, this book is full of plagiarism. Not only does that distract from the statements and figures given, it also detracts from the strength of the argument because it switches the focus from understanding what many people think to enduring the opinions, formatted as if they are facts, of the author himself. End notes do not visually distract from the page when added, and if put at the end of each chapter, they open the door to follow up reading on the topics discussed. This book falls extremely flat without anything seeming to back it up.
The chapters in the book do cover topics worthy of discussion and inquiry. As listed in the table of contents, they are as follows: government welfare, neoconservatism, taxes, government schools, authoritarianism, nationalism, central banking, prohibition, censorship, conscription, occupational licensure, eminent domain, gun control, minimum wage, climate change, immunity, marxism, civil asset forfeiture, permanent record, and bureaucracy. For those familiar with the Tuttle Twins picture books, you will likely notice many of the topics there overlap here. However, the format of the discussion of each topic is not nearly as strong as I wanted it to be, for reasons I have described above. Also, the examples chosen by the author to highlight his point do not always bolster his argument in meaningful ways, and instead demonstrate he is trying to shoehorn a specific, often minority, opinion about a specific recent politically-charged event into this book as if it is the only correct opinion on the still robustly-debated topic. In the chapter on immunity, it specifically states on the chapter’s front page “Allowing government officials to escape accountability for their harmful actions creates a perverse incentive that may actually increase harmful behavior.” This statement set up an expectation that this chapter would be about immunity enjoyed government officials. However, the vast majority of the chapter was about pharmaceutical companies and covid vaccines, both of which, to my understanding, are not government officials. There are plenty of other examples that could have been given that would actually address the claim given on the first page of the chapter. As something I have direct experience with in my past work, the best example I would choose for this chapter to directly address the topic would be qualified immunity given to police officers, both federal and state, protecting them from civil lawsuits. Given the threads throughout the book up until this point about large government and its monopoly on use of force against private citizens and their liberties, qualified immunity would be a fantastic way to bolster understanding of these nuanced topics. Alas, the author decided to highlight private businesses and the immunities they experience, shoehorning his personal tangential opinions into the text, even though the thesis statement on the front page directly posits that the chapter would be about government. This chapter is not the only time that the author brings recent controversies into the book as if his opinions are settled fact. Examples from slightly farther back in time, which have more robust community discussion around them, with political tensions less fraught with heightened emotion due to their longevity within the public discourse, would be much more effective.
I know this book is not necessarily the type of book many people would shelve here on Goodreads, and I am not typically one to write reviews, let alone long ones, but I think it is worthy to highlight these points herein for people wondering if this is a book that would help illuminate a multitude of topics for their children. The title of the book, calling these ideas the specific superlative “the worst”, should have indicated to me that it would be full of opinions. Quoting and citing giants such as Sowell, Bastiat, Hayek, and others commonly named in conservative circles would have greatly reinforced the educational value of this book. Using the Tuttle Twins as guides, directly in examples as well as using their characters to facilitate back and forth discussion, would have brought the tone from “I am Connor Boyack and my opinions are law” to “Here is a feast of ideas, we will help walk you through our understanding of the nuances of these topics, their various strengths and weaknesses, and now you get to make your own conclusions as to whether or not these ideas have merit and value.” Instead of reading this book, I believe going to robust source texts as a family and having dinner table discussions so our children can develop their own understandings would be a much more fruitful and virtue-forming practice.
This book feels quite different than the Tuttle Twins picture books and Logical Fallacies. The characterization of the Twins is a fantastic vehicle for personalizing and contextualizing complex ideas for young minds, especially as they are used as examples exploring those ideas in hypothetical situations. In this book, the Twins are a complete afterthought, with the author’s voice being the primary driver of every paragraph. There is a five-bullet point summary at the end of each chapter listed as Tuttle Twins Takeaways, but these bullet points are also strongly written within the author’s voice. At no point did this feel like two teenage characters guiding the reader through a feast of ideas. I felt like I was sitting across a cafe table from the author himself stating his own, often strong, opinions.
The tone of this book initially sets itself up like this is a book full of facts that will help you inform your opinions on the topics selected, but instead, it reads as a mini lecture of the author’s opinions without supporting evidence as demonstrated in the other Tuttle Twins books I have enjoyed. I shall clarify what I mean by this point. In the picture books, it is clear that the story is paraphrasing main ideas from a certain economist or philosopher of renown and their particular impactful writing on the topic (taking Bastiat’s The Law and making it relatable through the Twins’ adventures, but it is directly referencing Bastiat himself and makes it clear that The Law is the source of the main ideas demonstrated through the Twins’ fictional story). In this book, I was expecting a more in depth version of this same format: taking the robust ideas of well known and named people, contextualizing their ideas, and then expounding on them to understand application to real world scenarios. However, in the rare case that anyone’s name is mentioned, nothing of the sort occurs. This book completely lacks proper citations, and especially when quoting large bodies of text clearly taken from elsewhere, nothing has an end note or anything to indicate where those statements came from. According to my well-drilled high school lessons on citing your work if the idea or data point did not pop into your own head under your own direct observation, this book is full of plagiarism. Not only does that distract from the statements and figures given, it also detracts from the strength of the argument because it switches the focus from understanding what many people think to enduring the opinions, formatted as if they are facts, of the author himself. End notes do not visually distract from the page when added, and if put at the end of each chapter, they open the door to follow up reading on the topics discussed. This book falls extremely flat without anything seeming to back it up.
The chapters in the book do cover topics worthy of discussion and inquiry. As listed in the table of contents, they are as follows: government welfare, neoconservatism, taxes, government schools, authoritarianism, nationalism, central banking, prohibition, censorship, conscription, occupational licensure, eminent domain, gun control, minimum wage, climate change, immunity, marxism, civil asset forfeiture, permanent record, and bureaucracy. For those familiar with the Tuttle Twins picture books, you will likely notice many of the topics there overlap here. However, the format of the discussion of each topic is not nearly as strong as I wanted it to be, for reasons I have described above. Also, the examples chosen by the author to highlight his point do not always bolster his argument in meaningful ways, and instead demonstrate he is trying to shoehorn a specific, often minority, opinion about a specific recent politically-charged event into this book as if it is the only correct opinion on the still robustly-debated topic. In the chapter on immunity, it specifically states on the chapter’s front page “Allowing government officials to escape accountability for their harmful actions creates a perverse incentive that may actually increase harmful behavior.” This statement set up an expectation that this chapter would be about immunity enjoyed government officials. However, the vast majority of the chapter was about pharmaceutical companies and covid vaccines, both of which, to my understanding, are not government officials. There are plenty of other examples that could have been given that would actually address the claim given on the first page of the chapter. As something I have direct experience with in my past work, the best example I would choose for this chapter to directly address the topic would be qualified immunity given to police officers, both federal and state, protecting them from civil lawsuits. Given the threads throughout the book up until this point about large government and its monopoly on use of force against private citizens and their liberties, qualified immunity would be a fantastic way to bolster understanding of these nuanced topics. Alas, the author decided to highlight private businesses and the immunities they experience, shoehorning his personal tangential opinions into the text, even though the thesis statement on the front page directly posits that the chapter would be about government. This chapter is not the only time that the author brings recent controversies into the book as if his opinions are settled fact. Examples from slightly farther back in time, which have more robust community discussion around them, with political tensions less fraught with heightened emotion due to their longevity within the public discourse, would be much more effective.
I know this book is not necessarily the type of book many people would shelve here on Goodreads, and I am not typically one to write reviews, let alone long ones, but I think it is worthy to highlight these points herein for people wondering if this is a book that would help illuminate a multitude of topics for their children. The title of the book, calling these ideas the specific superlative “the worst”, should have indicated to me that it would be full of opinions. Quoting and citing giants such as Sowell, Bastiat, Hayek, and others commonly named in conservative circles would have greatly reinforced the educational value of this book. Using the Tuttle Twins as guides, directly in examples as well as using their characters to facilitate back and forth discussion, would have brought the tone from “I am Connor Boyack and my opinions are law” to “Here is a feast of ideas, we will help walk you through our understanding of the nuances of these topics, their various strengths and weaknesses, and now you get to make your own conclusions as to whether or not these ideas have merit and value.” Instead of reading this book, I believe going to robust source texts as a family and having dinner table discussions so our children can develop their own understandings would be a much more fruitful and virtue-forming practice.
April 9, 2026
All opinions and very little facts.
Did Not Finish
August 9, 2026Weird…I thought this was a book for kids.
July 6, 2025
A true and amazing book all about the worst ideas in the world, why they are wrong, and how they can be preventable.
The Tuttle Twins at their very best, an important novel that everybody should read!
The Tuttle Twins at their very best, an important novel that everybody should read!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews