[ Recently Published Articles | Editor’s Choice | Featured Books | Categories ]
[ Author Index | Subject Index ]
Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
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 […]
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay that explores the themes first expressed in Camus’s novel The Stranger. Camus begins with an exposition of suicide to see if Tolstoy’s argument, “if God does not exist then we must kill ourselves” is sound advice. He finds that it is not and that we have a […]
The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge
No description available.
The Problem of God
The Problem of God explores God as Completely Perfect, the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the Creator Ex Nihilo, the Necessary Being, the Cosmic Mind, and as All-Good and Omnipotent.
The Robots of Dawn
A puzzling case of “roboticide” takes interplanetary detective Elijah Baley from Earth to the planet Aurora – the self-styled World of the Dawn, where humans and robots coexist in seemingly perfect harmony. There, the most advanced robot in the Universe – an awesomely human machine – has been murdered. Only one man on Aurora had […]
The Square
Duras’ The Square is a short novella (published with three other stories in this edition) that explores the existentialist theme of what project one should choose for one’s life; ultimately, what do we do with ourselves?
The Universe, the Eleventh Dimension, and Everything
Some books have a hard time living up to their titles, but The Universe, the Eleventh Dimension, and Everything does just fine. Physicist and writer Richard Morris seeks to explain the current state of knowledge in cosmology and subatomic physics; as if that weren’t enough, he goes on to give us his take on how […]
Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society
For those who have felt that other memetics sources were just teasers, your 20 year wait is over! Written by a scientist who independently discovered memetics when the field was less than 10% its present age, Thought Contagion explains movements ranging from Amish to Nazi, sexually transmitted beliefs to apocalyptic religion. The book earns advance […]
Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe
Suppose there is no God. This supposition implies that human life is meaningless, that there are no moral obligations and hence people can do whatever they want, and that the notions of virtue and vice, right and wrong, and good and evil have no place in the universe. Erik J. Wielenberg believes this view to […]
What Really Happened to Jesus
This book created a storm of controversy in Europe as soon as it was published. Were the resurrection appearances real physical events–or nothing more than grief-induced hallucinations? What does it mean to say, Jesus rose from the dead? Dissatisfied with what he regarded as evasive answers given by theologians and scholars about the nature of […]
Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief
Over the centuries, theories have abounded as to why human beings have a seemingly irrational attraction to God and religious experiences. In Why God Won’t Go Away authors Andrew Newberg, M.D., Eugene D’Aquili, M.D., and Vince Rause offer a startlingly simple, yet scientifically plausible opinion: humans seek God because our brains are biologically programmed to […]
Witness for the Defense
A synopsis of this book is unavailable.
2001: A Space Odyssey
The classic science fiction novel that changed the way we looked at the stars and ourselves.
A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels
Scholars and believers from the first century to the present have been troubled by the fact that differing, often sharply divergent, accounts of Jesus’ life can be found in the Gospels. John Dominic Crossan and the Jesus Seminar have stirred interest in Jesus and the Gospels by sifting through the New Testament for the authentic […]
Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness
Description Do religions have an inherent right to be respected? Is atheism itself a form of religion, and can there be such a thing as a “fundamentalist atheist”? Are we witnessing a global revival in religious zeal, or do the signs point instead to religion’s ultimate decline? In a series of bold, unsparing polemics, A. […]
Are Souls Real?
Do you have a supernatural soul? If you think you do, have you asked yourself why you think so? If souls are real, will yours survive after you die? Is your soul your most valuable possession, or is the entire idea of the soul a fossilized remnant of an outdated worldview? How we answer these […]
Atheism: The Case Against God
George Smith’s book, Atheism: The Case Against God, is one of the most popular books on atheism ever written. Although Smith is a philosopher, you don’t need to be a philosopher to read this book. If you’ve ever wanted to know more about theism but were afraid to ask, this book is for you.
Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition
Lucky numbers. Chain letters. Psychic predictions. Wade Boggs’s obsessive eccentricities before each game. The lure of The X-Files and Stephen King. Although we live in a technologically advanced society, superstition is as widespread as it has ever been. Here, Stuart Vyse examines current behavioral research to demonstrate how complex and paradoxical human behavior can be […]
Blameless in Abaddon
This is the sequel to Towing Jehovah, a novel that garnered a World Fantasy Award and earned its author the moniker, “Christianity’s Salman Rushdie.” In this book, the two-mile long corpse of God (the corpus dei) has been towed to Florida, where the American Baptist Confederation has set it up as the Main Attraction at […]
