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Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
Fantastic Voyage
Four men and a woman are reduced to a microscopic fraction of their original size, sent in a miniaturized atomic sub through a dying man’s carotid artery. Passing through the heart, entering the inner ear where even the slightest sound would destroy them, battling relentlessly into the cranium. Their objective… to reach a blood clot […]
Freethought on the American Frontier
A collection of memoirs, essays, political cartoons, songs, and poetry of the freethought movement during the 19th century. Essays by such social critics as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, and Langston Hughes are included. Populist, Socialist, and labor-related issues are also presented. The book has good illustrations and political cartoons.
God Matters: Readings in the Philosophy of Religion
God Matters is a state-of-the-art, accessible anthology of the major issues in philosophy of religion. Its accessibility is due to its mix of classic readings and brand new readings about contemporary issues, commissioned specifically with an undergraduate student in mind. These commissioned readings make the difficult concepts of contemporary philosophy of religion easy to understand, […]
Harlan Ellison’s the City on the Edge of Forever
The controversy has raged for almost 30 years–now readers can judge for themselves. Harlan Ellison wrote the original award-winning teleplay for “The City on the Edge of Forever,” which was rewritten and became the most-loved Star Trek episode of all time. Ellison sued Paramount in protest and won. This book contains the teleplay and afterwords […]
How We Got to Be Human: Subjective Minds with Objective Bodies
Although the objective evidence of evolution has received considerable attention in many books over the years, very little has been written about the subjective experienced (mental) side of the lives of the creatures involved. This book is about how we evolved from four-legged mammals with simple minds, through semi-upright apes who are occasionally thoughtful, to […]
In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace
Virtually unknown today, Alfred Russel Wallace was the codiscoverer of natural selection with Charles Darwin and an eminent scientist who stood out among his Victorian peers as a man of formidable mind and equally outsized personality. Now Michael Shermer rescues Wallace from the shadow of Darwin in this landmark biography. Here we see Wallace as […]
Invisible Man
First published in 1952, Invisible Man revealed the pain of a black man’s existence in a white world. It was shocking then, but remains important literature today. It is the story of a young man’s journey — through the Deep South to the streets of Harlem, through events and experiences that range from tortured to […]
Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years
Description The Fifth-Century Political Battles That Forever Changed the Church. In this fascinating account of the surprisingly violent fifth-century church, Jenkins describes in bloody detail the battles over “right belief” that had a far greater impact on the future of Christianity than the much-touted Council of Nicea convened by Constantine a century earlier. Jenkins argues […]
Letter to a Christian Nation
Book Description In response to The End of Faith, Sam Harris received thousands of letters from Christians excoriating him for not believing in God. Letter to A Christian Nation is his reply. Using rational argument, Harris offers a measured refutation of the beliefs that form the core of fundamentalist Christianity. In the course of his […]
Maybe Right, Maybe Wrong
A marvelous children’s book that discusses learning right from wrong, stressing such aspects as the difference between rules and principles and the importance of an individual’s rights.
Mostly Harmless
In the fifth volume of the Hitchhiker series, Random, the daughter of Arthur Dent, leaves her remote home planet on the edge of the universe to set out on a odyssey in search of her ancestors’ native planet.
Nonbelief and Evil
Nonbelief and Evil is a fascinating, thorough, and persuasive presentation of two arguments for the nonexistence of God: the arguments from evil and nonbelief. Moreover, Drange defends his arguments against virtually every theistic response imaginable.
Original Intent
Davis, an attorney and an associate editor of the Journal of Church and State, argues that Rehnquist’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s prohibition against an establishment of religion is at odds with what the framers had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment.
Physicalism: The Philosophical Foundation
Physicalism is a program for building a unified system of knowledge about the world on the basis of the view that everything is a manifestation of the physical aspects of existence. Jeffrey Poland presents a systematic and comprehensive exploration of the philosophical foundations of this program. He investigates the core ideas, motivating values, and presuppositions […]
Rational Mothers and Infidel Gentlemen: Gender and American Atheism, 1865-1915
Calling themselves “Freethinkers,” self-proclaimed liberals organized across the United States after the Civil War to oppose endorsement of Christianity as the national religion. Heralding a trinity of science, rationalism, and progress, these atheists and agnostics advocated the complete separation of church and state. They were self-conscious prototypes of the modern, secular American and counted among […]
Religious Postures
Professor Wells examines such issues as fundamentalism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, David Friedrich Strauss, Wilhelm Tell, the evidence for miracles, the employment of Kantian and Hegelian metaphysics to defend religion, the alleged need for a religious foundation for ethics, the reasonableness of atheism, and the phenomenal success of religion in surviving its own refutation.
School Prayer: The Court, the Congress, and the First Amendment
Alley gives special attention to the highly controversial Engel v. Vitale decision in 1962, which banned the recitation of a prayer composed by the New York State Board of Regents in public schools. Extensive selections from the arguments on both sides of the controversy afford the reader a firsthand look into the many deliberations surrounding […]
Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism
If God does not exist, then what does? Is there good and evil, and should we care? How do we know what’s true anyway? And can we make any sense of this universe, or our own lives? Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism answers all these questions in lavish detail, without […]
Sri Lanka: The Emerald Island
Historical outline of the history of Sri Lanka. Photos of Sri Lanka.
Tales from the ‘White Hart’
Long before Douglas Adams ever thought of a “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, Arthur C. Clark brought off a successful marriage between humor and science fiction. Whereas Adams’ humor is broad, lowbrow, and slapstick, Clark’s is intelligent, dry, and refined.
The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right
The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right by Didi Herman is a smart, thorough, concise book describing why and how conservative Protestant evangelicals employ antigay rhetoric in politics, journalism, and worship. Herman–a legal scholar at Keele University in Great Britain–has a convincing mastery of sociology, theology, rhetoric, and politics, in addition to her […]
The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins is not a shy man. Edward Larson’s research shows that most scientists today are not formally religious, but Dawkins is an in-your-face atheist in the witty British style: I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that […]
The Changing Faces of Jesus
In The Changing Faces of Jesus world renowned scholar Geza Vermes explores the New Testament writings about Jesus that have subsequently defined two millennia of Christian belief, worship and speculation. With unique authority and insight, Vermes treats these accounts as an authentic part of the first-century Jewish world, and so transforms our understanding of Jesus. […]
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin’s second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of […]
The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom
The Science of Freedom completes Peter Gay’s brilliant reinterpretation of the Enlightenment of the philosophes begun in The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism. In that book, Mr. Gay analyzed the struggle in which the philosophes pitted classical pagan thought against their Christian heritage. In the present book, which can be read independently as a […]
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time is a poignant, personal observation of the turbulent life for African-Americans during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Baldwin cuts right to the heart of the matter in this masterful book, suggesting that whites in America have historically operated under the illusion that they have something that black Americans must […]
The Green Hills of Earth
First published in 1951, this collection includes “Delilah and the Space-Rigger,” “Space-Jockey,” “The Long Watch,” “Gentlemen Be Seated,” “The Black Pits of Luna,” “It’s Great to Be Back,” “We Also Walk Dogs,” “Ordeal in Space,” “The Green Hills of Earth” and “Logic of Empire.”
The Impossibility of God
Most people, believers and nonbelievers alike, are unacquainted with the variety and force of arguments for the nonexistence of God. In fact, the very mention of such an argument is usually a source of amusement, if not derision. Indeed, how can there be a serious argument for the nonexistence of God, let alone for the […]
The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims
Description This book reveals how, for well over a millennium, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—non-Muslims who were vanquished by jihad wars, became forced tributaries (called dhimmi in Arabic), in lieu of being slain. Under the dhimmi religious caste system, non-Muslims were subjected to legal and financial oppression, as well as social isolation. Extensive primary […]
The Meme Machine
What is a meme? First coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 study The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, and ways of plowing a field, throwing a baseball, or making a sculpture. It is […]
