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Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
Cradle
The creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey teams up with renowned space scientist Gentry Lee to give readers a thrilling space adventure set on the edge of tomorrow. This far-reaching, spine-tingling adventure stretches from the dawn of time to the distant future, from the edges of the universe to the vast depths of the sea. […]
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
In 1991 Dennett wrote Consciousness Explained, and it so burned up the religious minded they tagged it Consciousness Explained Away. Here, Dennett presses forward the implications of natural selection (the “dangerous idea” ) in a presentation most readers will find rather technical, but for those who persevere, understanding of its mechanisms, particularly the algorithms by […]
Dictionary of Science & Creationism
Ever wanted to look up a topic related to the creationism vs. evolution controversy, but never knew where to go? Ronald Ecker’s Dictionary of Science & Creationism makes it easy to find the answers you want… fast!
E = mc2
Subtitled: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation E=mc2. Just about everyone has at least heard of Albert Einstein’s formulation of 1905, which came into the world as something of an afterthought. But far fewer can explain his insightful linkage of energy to mass. David Bodanis offers an easily grasped gloss on the equation. […]
Evolving: The Human Effect and Why It Matters
Description “Understanding evolution is the key to determining our planet’s future.” In this persuasive, elegantly written book, research geneticist Daniel J. Fairbanks argues that understanding evolution has never mattered more in human history. Fairbanks not only uses evidence from archaeology, geography, anatomy, biochemistry, radiometric dating, cell biology, chromosomes, and DNA to establish the inescapable conclusion […]
Feersum Endjinn
In a world where one can live multiple lives, Count Alandre Sessine VIII has survived seven times and is down to his last, leaving him one final shot at finding his killer. His only clues point to a conspiracy that reaches far beyond his own murder, and survival lies in discovering other fugitives who know […]
From Genesis to Genetics: The Case of Evolution and Creationism
The clash between evolution and creationism is one of the most hotly contested topics in education today. This book, written by one of America’s most distinguished science educators, provides essential background information on this difficult and important controversy. Giving a sweeping and balanced historical look at both schools of thought, John A. Moore shows that […]
God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory
In the last fifteen years a controversial new theory of the origins of biological complexity and the nature of the universe has been fomenting bitter debates in education and science policy across North America, Europe, and Australia. Backed by intellectuals at respectable universities, Intelligent Design theory (ID) proposes an alternative to accepted accounts of evolutionary […]
Hereafter: Searching for Immortality
Book Description As long as people have been on earth, they have constructed various explanations of what happens after death. Hereafter combines an overview of the history of these theories and a survey of the current attitudes toward immortality. Other than physical form and genetic structure, we hold little in common with our earliest ancestors […]
Human, All Too Human
The first new translation of this work to appear since the beginning of the 20th century. Subtitled “A Book for Free Spirits”, it marked a new positivism and skepticism for Nietzsche with which he challenged his previous metaphysical and psychological assumptions.
In Freedom We Trust
Description Opponents attack the president of the United States for not being a real Christian. Bitter arguments erupt over whether the United States is or should be a Christian nation. Sound familiar? These contentious issues are not just recent developments but were also the topics of fierce debate in the late eighteenth century. President Thomas […]
Is It God’s Word?
Simply the best book available on biblical discrepancies, inconsistencies, contradictions, anachronisms, and myth.
Johannes Brahms: A Biography
It is sometimes said that only religion has inspired truly great, moving music, especially symphonies. Of course, this is not true (the works of conductors from Gustav Holst to Ennio Morricone prove that religious themes or inspiration need not lie behind some of the greatest music ever written). But the myth is even more strongly […]
Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God
A distinctive voice somewhere between Mark Twain and Michel Montaigne is how Psychology Today described A.C. Grayling. In Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, readers have the pleasure of hearing this distinctive voice address some of the most serious topics in philosophy–and in our daily lives–including reflections on guns, anger, conflict, war; […]
Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age
Magnanimity is in short supply, writes A. C. Grayling is this wonderfully incisive book, “but it is the main ingredient in everything that makes the world a better place” And indeed Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age is itself a generous, insightful, wide-ranging, magnanimous inquiry into the philosophical and ethical questions that […]
Mystery of Mysteries : Is Evolution a Social Construction
With the recent Sokal hoax-the publication of a prominent physicist’s pseudo-article in a leading journal of cultural studies-the status of science moved sharply from debate to dispute. Is science objective, a disinterested reflection of reality, as Karl Popper and his followers believed? Or is it subjective, a social construction, as Thomas Kuhn and his students […]
Notes from the Underground
“I am a sick man, full of bile and spite. I think there is something wrong with my liver,” begins Dostoevsky’s haunting novella narrated in the first-person by a man who is at odds with himself. This classic work shocked and inspired Nietzsche who went on to develop his own existential philosophy. At less than […]
Out of God’s Closet
Description Faithful Catholic priest-become-atheist psychologist shows how he did—and how you, too—can unlearn childhood prejudices and superstitions, and really enjoy the modified Golden Rule. This book could have been titled The Book of Tolerance. The psychologist author recognizes that every child learns a lot of traditions and beliefs when too young to evaluate them. Such […]
Porphyry’s Against the Christians
Throughout its first three centuries, the growing Christian religion was subjected not only to official persecution but to the attacks of pagan intellectuals, who looked upon the new sect as a band of fanatics bent on worldwide domination even as they professed to despise the things of this world. Prominent among these pagan critics was […]
Reason and Existenz
Written during the rise of German National Socialism, Jaspers’ Reason and Existenz attempts to systematize existentialist philososphy. Unlike Sarte’s notion that the future holds infinite choice, Jaspers argues (in agreement with his colleague Heidegger) that the future is a mere rehash of the past where every action has already been anticipated. Thus, for Jaspers only […]
Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy
Description Resurrection Reconsidered is an eye-opening exposition of the various views of resurrection among early Christians that centers on the protracted debate within early Christian circles concerning a foundational aspect of the Gospel of Thomas and its related literature: the concept of the body and resurrection. It traces the background of this idea in the […]
Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy
If you buy only one book on evolution, buy this book. This (newly revised) book covers everything you could ever possibly want to know about evolution and how to answer creationist objections to it.
Skeptical Philosophy for Everyone
This lucid, informal, and very accessible history of Western thought takes the unique approach of interpreting skepticism, i.e., doubts about knowledge claims and the criteria for making such claims is an important stimulus for the development of philosophy. The authors argue that practically every great thinker from the time of the Greeks to the present […]
State of the Art
A collection of short fiction by the author of “The Wasp Factory” and “Against a Dark Background”.The title story is a novella continuing the “Culture” sequence but set on Earth in 1977. The otherstories range from science fiction to horror, and dark-coated fantasy to morality tale.
Ten Philosophical Mistakes
Adler’s general argument is this: the important modern philosophers, beginning with Descartes, made certain errors which have had disastrous results for contemporary notions of the objects of consciousness, the nature of the human mind, the nature of language, of knowledge, of moral principles, of free will, and even the nature of happiness. Succeeding philosophers, especially […]
The Atheist’s Creed
Description In The Atheist’s Creed Dr. Michael Palmer presents the most comprehensive anthology of the major philosophical arguments for atheism. While the so-called ‘new atheism’ of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others, has attracted considerable publicity, it is the philosophical arguments that have been presented down through the ages that provide the principal […]
The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You to Read
Consider this book as a kind of consumer protection guide to religion, a big step forward toward religious literacy. Readers will explore myths, origins, fundamentalism, television ministries, the identical stories of Stellar/Pagan/Christian beliefs, unfounded doctrines, child abuse, the Year 200, and women’s rights. It’s entertaining and readable, with a sense of humor reflecting the absurdities […]
The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails
Description In this anthology of recent criticisms aimed at the reasonableness of Christian belief, former evangelical minister and apologist John W. Loftus, author of the critically acclaimed Why I Became an Atheist, has assembled fifteen outstanding articles by leading skeptics, expanding on themes introduced in his first book. Central is a defense of Loftus’ “outsider’s […]
The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft : Dreams of Terror and Death
This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H. P. Lovecraft, the master of twentieth-century horror, including The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Nameless City, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadith, and twenty more tales of surreal terror. “[Lovecraft’s] dream […]
The Eternal Footman
The Eternal Footman completes Morrow’s darkly comic trilogy about God’s untimely demise. With God’s skull in orbit, competing with the moon, a plague of “death awareness” spreads across the Western hemisphere. As the United States sinks into apocalypse, two people fight to preserve life and sanity. One is Nora Burkhart, a schoolteacher who will stop […]
