Short description
With insight and wit, Hitchens takes on his biggest subject yet--the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world.
Long description
Now available as a value-priced edition!
Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time takes on his biggest subject yet--the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world.
With his unique brand of erudition and wit, Hitchens describes the ways in which religion is man-made. God did not make us, he says. We made God. He explains the ways in which religion is immoral: We damage our children by indoctrinating them. It is a cause of sexual repression, violence, and ignorance. It is a distortion of our origins and the cosmos. In the place of religion, Hitchens offers the promise of a new enlightenment through science and reason, a realm in which hope and wonder can be found through a strand of DNA or a gaze through the Hubble Telescope. As Hitchens sees it, you needn't get the blues once you discover the heavens are empty.
Review
The author propounds his belief that all religion is not only wrong-headed but dangerous. One doubts the flamboyant journalist will sway those convinced that metaphysical certainty depends on faith, not proof, and that the higher powers are fundamentally good. Others will find his points familiar (if not self-evident), his knowledge wide, his writing graceful, and his sarcasm apt. Like partisans of any description, he ignores inconvenient facts and overstates his case. As narrator, he contributes a pleasantly moderated voice and a listener-friendly British accent. At times, he sounds a bit tired, at other times rushed, but, all in all, he reads well enough, with the added benefit of knowing where the laugh lines are. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 07/ JAN 08]