Overrated and underrated works

The new issue of Prospect magazine carries a survey of contributors' opinions. The question is which aspects of culture - books, films, television shows, operas, plays, concerts - were respectively the most overrated and most underrated of 2007. This was my answer for the most overrated:

"Earlier volumes of Tony Benn’s diaries have contained much of political and human interest. More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007 (Hutchinson), though, is a vainglorious and trivial document untempered by critical judgement or common sense. Benn’s account of his 2003 interview with Saddam Hussein—which for obsequiousness in the face of despotism would have put Robert Maxwell to shame—is exceeded in gullibility and tastelessness by the author’s reflections on the 9/11 “truth” campaign: “Probably, in their heart of hearts, most people think the attack was genuine, but I don’t rule anything out."

And this was my answer for the most underrated:

"As the messianic Holocaust denier holding the presidency of Iran might remind us, bizarre and atavistic ideas remain a potent force in world affairs. The most underrated book of 2007 is a model exposition of one such notion that has almost died out. Flat Earth by Christine Garwood (Macmillan) is an elegant and non-polemical study of a movement that is now a synonym for crankery, but whose methods of reasoning (consider the biblical literalism of “scientific creationism”) are with us always."