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Many of the books I've read that have atheism as their subject or refer to it in their titles have been polemics against religion in the style of Hitchens' "God Is Not Great". When I was given this book then, I was tempted to expect a similarly excoriating exposure of religion's failings. However, while it is written by an atheist, its tone is not belligerent. It might better have been titled "An Objective History of Belief" and I wonder if the use of "Atheist's" in the title might have been calculated to appeal to the market for new atheist literature. An engaging read that for me doesn't quite succeed in pinning down the reasons for the invention of religion, which I suspect to be Darwinian. More coverage would have been welcome too on new religious movements.

Very interesting. Shows how it's almost impossible to talk about the "originals" of the texts in the Bible. It reveals how apologetic scribes tweaked texts through omissions or additions to support prevailing dogmas.

Without realising it, I appear to have become a fan of dystopian counterfactual fiction.(Wow, is that, you know, A Thing?). This particular novel certainly fits into that category, presenting as a memoir the events leading up to the establishment of a brutal Christian theocracy in the USA. The protagonist is a liberal-minded New York lawyer, who helps a charismatic friend battle the forces of a "dominionist" (Google it!) Christian movement that uses a Palin presidency as springboard to power. Implausible? Unlikely, but not necessarily implausible given the assistance of some unpredictable events that the dominionists seize on to do, as the author is at pains to point out, "what they said they would do". It reads sometimes as polemic, the traditional twists and turns of plot never really happen and some might find the lengthy passages of legal exposition a turnoff, but I wasn't bothered by these flaws. I had, in fact, expected a slightly trashier read but was pleasantly surprised by its erudition.