But the whole Tolkien thing? 19th century writers?<p>Some of the books which most influenced my world view are English; Dawkins (game theory, other writers criticize religion better) and Orwell (&quot;Down and Out in Paris and London&quot;, partly also &quot;Animal farm&quot; etc).<p>You can&#x27;t generalize millions of people. For a more extreme example of that:<p>The majority of my intellectual (for lack of a better word) &quot;idols&quot; are probably from USA -- but quite a few people that moved there claims the US average levels of general education is abysmal (except for the specific subject someone studied).<p>The funniest variant of this was when an old student friend pointed out that his many Americans friends knew more about European history than the average European. (He was active in SCA.)