The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

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Christopher Hitchens
Hachette Books, Nov 6, 2007 - Literary Criticism - 499 pages
Despite the mistaken use of the label "New Atheists," there is a lot of continuity over the past couple of centuries among atheist authors in their critiques of religion, theism, and superstition. Not every argument is identical, and even when the same basic argument is being offered there can be variety in how it is presented. This evolution of atheist critiques of supernatural religion is one of the virtues of Christopher Hitchens' book The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Well known for his own atheist book God Is Not Great, Hitchens treads some very heavily-traveled ground here in editing a compendium of atheist writings. Do we really need yet another book of essays, isolated chapters, and other selections from atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and skeptics of the past? What could we get out of this latest offering that we didn't get from the past half dozen that we bought - or the others that we simply skipped? Those are good questions, and reasons why I was skeptical of Hitchens' book, but in the end I think he succeeds in making his book more than "just one more" collection of atheist essays.

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Contents

LUCRETIUS from De Rerum Natura On the Nature
1
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA TheologicalPolitical Treatise
21
JAMES BOSWELL An Account of My Last Interview
46
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was the author of Letters to a Young Contrarian, God Is Not Great, and No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Atlantic Monthly, and Slate, Hitchens also wrote for The Weekly Standard, The National Review, and The Independent, and appeared on The Daily Show, Charlie Rose, The Chris Matthew's Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and C-Span's Washington Journal. He was named one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

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