So much of this book is moving, personal and witty. It includes a brilliant article by Michael Shermer www.michaelshermer.com about how God made it look like evolution happened in such a convincing way to test our faith. Daniel Dennett wrote about how an accident left him close to death (obviously, he recovered, thanks to a caring medical staff) and what this says about human goodness. Old and unexpected writers, such as Mark Twain and Omar Khayyam, are fascinating reading. These present facets of atheism that many of us wouldn't have thought of.
If you think Hitch et al present a "straw man" view of religion that is childish, irrational and counterproductive, do some research and you'll see that a lot of people in the U.S. do believe this way.

Christopher Hitchens is a formidable writer who has dared to enmesh himself in the business of religion and politics, and has plenty of polemic writings suited for criticisms or apologetics (depending on one's worldview,) but his choices for this anthology are priceless. Living in the heartland of the Bible Belt, I find it difficult to sport mixed company in my home and have this title on my bookshelf, but I will nonetheless do precisely that because far from betraying some "fundamentalism" of non-belief, this collection is a conversation-starter.

There are roughly forty-seven writings that cover a few hundred years of thinkers who speak to their own age in a clarity that continues to be relevant to this generation's issues, struggles, and human endeavors. This volume should be read along with Jennifer Michael Hecht's *Doubt*, and Louise M. Antony's *Philosophers Without Gods*, both incredible works in their own right.

There are several reviews that reflect the contents of this anthology, so I'll only speak to the personal appeal of this collection. Sam Harris sums it up in a sentence: "...wanting to know how the world is leaves one vulnerable to new evidence." In contrast to the book subtitle "Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever," I would stress how valuable this book might be to the average reader, regardless of belief. Who might be threatened by reading John Stuart Mill, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, or George Eliot? I find myself hungry for more of these writers and thinkers. Thank the gods for an Amazon "wish list," and I would wager that after reading this anthology, yours would grow by two or three books! This is a collection that will stimulate one's appetite for more reading. This is the mark of a good book.

I may disagree with Christopher Hitchens on a variety of his political or religious points, but the collection of writings here is second to none, and I sincerely believe that humanity would be better served if these writers were discussed in more mainstream dialogue. It would be such a refreshing change from the election-time diatribes that divide, demonize, and segregate us into tribal factions--maybe those inescapable conditions that are uniquely human. But after reading these selections, and seeing these great thinkers throughout many ages with their hopes that we might escape some of the self-inflicted chains of human bondage, I pass this book on to my son with hopes that he might live a sincerely free-thinking, more altruistic and compassionate life.

I highly recommend this book for your consideration, and hope you enjoy it as much as I do. This was one of those "life changers" on my personal bookshelf.

Just like the Bible can also be appreciated by non-believers, due to its impact on world history, it is not required to be an atheist to appreciate this anti-religious anthology.

First of all, what I liked about it was that it was actually of a less polemical nature than Hitchens' own writings. Sure, there are polemics in it, but there are also several more personal - vulnerable, if you will - accounts of struggles with belief and unbelief, such as the excerpt from Darwin's autobiography, or James Boswell's (himself a believer) fascinating account of his last interview with David Hume shortly before the latter's death.

The book also does us a service by indirectly reminding us that Karl Marx should not just be judged by the evils of the Gulag Archipelago, but be treated as someone with many noble and worthwhile thoughts.

Other highlights of the book were George Eliot's "On Evangelical Teaching," which I had not read before and which might just as well have been written about TV evangelists of today. Eliot, speaking from more than 150 years in the past, eloquently described my own church background in which I grew up. A fascinating - almost prophetic - experience.

I was also a bit surprised by the amount of very clear statements Albert Einstein had made about his religious position. I had been under the impression before that Einstein's position required quite a bit of interpretation, and that the view of Dawkins and Hitchens was just one among many. The quotes helped me to become undeceived in this regard.

The only critique I have against the anthology is that the inclusion of many of Hitchens' friends seems somewhat preposterous. The historical impact of Lucretius, Hobbes, Spinoza, Marx, Darwin, Twain, Einstein etc. is firmly established, and their inclusion in this anthology is a fitting homage. But to then continue with Michael Shermer, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the like turns an anthology of great historical weight into an advertisement for New Atheism.

Perhaps Shermer, Dennet, Harris and their friends will one day all be considered on par with Marx and Einstein, but it's too early to tell. If I wrote a book on essential political figures, I wouldn't move from Alexander the Great and Napoleon to my local governor, either.

I am tempted to take a star off for that. Let's make it half a star. 4.5/5 for "The Portable Atheist."

the "Essential" guide as it's handle goes, isn't nearly strong enough language to describe what a great mini-anthology Mr. Hitchens has created.
No longer are we in an age where fairness in regards to the god question is required. Zealots and religious ignorance continuously attempt to control civilization- no longer can we allow this! Hitchens, best of luck and thanx for the great read!

The idea that the total public scientific datum is prone to crystallization within the mindstream of a functional interpreter as honest belief in the irreality of the supernatural is the memetic fallacy (the wack wrapper, antimoreality, unfactual selection, true malefiction, neophobe's fun and exciting new crush, I'm>sick manoeuvre, missed-leading heathen's fiendingest lebensphenomenologie, intentional deficit, intelligence failure, for them: somehow too-ready being-un-ready-to-hand, vainglorious needs' IV, Janjaweed dro, waterless fountain, rotten apple that should have been left behind, stipend of bad-faith, willed Nyeism, nihlargesse, "I didn't", ethanol ... the devolutionary gnome's playhouse and favoured hiding spot of Earth's most vulgar and detestable confabulists) par excellence.

I've been an agnostic for around ten years now, for the very reasons that are so thoroughly and beautiful expressed in this book. I don't consider myself an atheist yet because, I suppose out of some desperation and hope I want to believe in a god that understands my wanting not to slip into obilivion, a state of nothingness. I want to believe in a god that understands my needing to be with family and friends for an eternity. But the rationalist and the skeptic in me is reasoning all the time that these thoughts are merely too good to be true. And so I am on the fence, not concerning religion or the religious concept of god because religion is, always has been and always will be evil, but rather the idea of god itself that I am to reckon with. For I believe that god and religion are not inseperable.

While I believe no philosophical idea or scientific explanation can ever put to rest the idea of god, let alone the possibility, The Portable Atheist is a brilliant collection of examples in which people have used the idea of god through religion to intimidate, persecute, enslave and murder millions of people for thousands of years. This book also exemplifies the civilized and promising nature of scientific enquiry in the writings of men including Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein. What I think books like this one do best is to demonstrate how obscenely religion weakens the human spirit and destroys education, but most importantly I think it gives atheists and agnostics a voice, a way and a reason to stand up to insane thoughts and assures the nonbeliever, someone like me, that I am not alone in this world. So I thank you Christopher Hitchens and everyone else who contributed to this book for assuring me that I am indeed not alone.

Monsieur Christopher Hitchens has performed a necessary intellectual work of mercy. Once humankind desists from its vulgar notion of deity, it can begin the tiresome duties of keeping as much of us as possible alive.

Since we are competently trained in ancient Semitic and Ind-European languages and theoretical mathematics, we twin brothers know who has been doing the heavy lifting of keeping humanity alive and prosperous. It certainly is not the dolts in political, religious or military systems (they who live off the backs of the common people).

Mr. Hitchens has given us fresh fruit from the tree of 'real' knowledge to advance the survivability of our species. Professor Dawkins and to-be Dr. Sam Harris (neuro-science technical background) have enriched the soil of these trees in the enclosed orchard of learning.

If we presently do not get beyond this vulgar Bronze Age duplicity of rulership and priestcraft, we will be doomed to extinction as a species in our niche biosphere, or filmy skin of Earth!

The fools in religion merely have to adduce one rare, slender piece of evidence for the existence of deity. Perchance, our archeologists will find the finger of Yahweh on Mt. Sinai who impertinently gave us the incompetent Ten Commandments (Do not read in Egyptian Hieroglyphics the Book of the Dead for the 'real' 42 commandments---from whence the Hebrews shamefully and slavishly stole!) to bolster their puny claims.

Right ideas for the right time!


Respectfully,


John E.D.P. Malin,
Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer
James F.D.P. Malin,
Vice Chairman of the Board & Chief Research & Development Officer
Informatica Corporation [A.D. 1984-2008]
Executive Division
P.O. Drawer 460
Cecilia, Louisiana 70521-0460

"Fathers of the Silicon Bayou"

Contact Information: InformaticaMalin@gmail.com

P.S. Master the higher mathematics of Algebraic Geometry, it is the genuine and authentic language of global human survival; presently, it is the mathematics adduced by our structured and unstructured data systems running our economic business structures or organizations.

--

It's nice to read the viewpoints of different authors. I never tire of reading how intelligent people view religion. I do, however, tire of dogmatic imbeciles like Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson etc. who blather on about "what the bible says." Maybe that should read those books someday and understand that no civilized society should look to them as anything more than literary entertainment.

This book is a nice collection of essays, letters and excerpts from other writings from a number of different non-believing and freethinking authors throughout history.

The introduction by Hitchens does a nice (and poignant as always) job at framing the chronologically arranged collection of pieces. Along with contemporary writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet and Salman Rushdie, other 'jewels' are collected from times past: from Benedict de Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes, to H.P. Lovecraft, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, George Orwell and many more.

Most of the segments are accessible reads. Some offer interesting insight, like Thomas Hobbes and Bertrand Russell. Some show the sharpest wit, such as Mark Twain and George Eliot, and a couple (in my opinion) were on the boring side, most notably Karl Marx's introduction to Hegel's Critique of Pure Reason.

The book closes with Salman Rushdie's remarkable letter to a new-born baby written for the UN-sponsored book, "A Letter to Six Billion People". All in all, a great (and long!) read.

It sometimes takes courage and conviction to do your own thinking, especially about matters religious, and the selections here present thought and arguments through the ages about unbelief and imaginary friends, about the cruelties forced upon others by people who think that they will gain a diety's favor by murdering or torturing others. All believers are enablers. Nice people, huh? These murderers and torturers are the believers, not the unbelievers. Believers also try to make unbelievers uncomfortable. I for one will no longer tolerate that.
The burden of proof is always upon the believer. "Faith" is no argument. It's a belief not based on fact. Children believe things on faith. Not thinking, responsible adults.
My copy of this book is by now dog-eared and highlighted. Some authors are better than others and some are easier to read, but I feel I am in good company with these authors for all they have learned in life and for their ability to think for themselves. For their courage and conviction I salute all who have gone before and fought their oppressors. Their path was harder than mine.
I don't need to believe in an ego induced afterlife. Fear of death is the motivator for religion, nothing more, nothing less. The ego, over and over and over again.
Buy this book and let it be your friend. Let it rid you of guilt and free you of your imagined sins against an imagined "lord" and jealous "god." Enjoy the only life you ever will have. On death you will be in the same "place" you were "at" before you were born.

Being a fan of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet, and other authors/thinkers pertaining to this "genre", I have no choice but to offer Kudos. There are many views from various characters throughout world history to our present time included in this compilation of quotes, notations, and essays etc.etc. This book should be included in any collection of voices representing freethought and even as a reference for any research along these same lines.
Thank You, Don Ward

First off, there are plenty of famous atheists not here, but given the space, Hitchens has gathered a motley, inspiring, humorous, and always brilliant band of iconoclasts (though I do not recall if Nietszche himself was included)..Going way back to the ancients, hitting the stride with Hume, and including Boswell's interview with Hume as he lay dying ( a piece not to be missed), moving on to Darwin, Russell, and of course Dawkins, and contemporary polemicists, even an excerpt from Updike, you really cannot miss here. Brit Novelist Ian McKeowen shows up with a look at "end days" movements, a speech he gave at Stanford. Perhaps some rational ideas, science, and genius brains may admit some light to the make-believers out there, and we can only hope so!

This collection of writings by a diverse group of thinkers is well worth the price of admission. This is a valuable work that one is likely to refer back to often.

Included are essays by: Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, H.P. Lovecraft, George Orwell, Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette, Salmon Rushdie, and Sam Harris.

I highly recommend this book.

--Guy P. Harrison, author of
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

It's difficult to figure out what Christopher Hitchens means when he subtitles this collection 'Essential' Readings for the Nonbeliever. If by 'essential' he means the most rigorous but still accessible defenses of atheism available, the book is mistitled. There's actually very little here that's intellectually meaty, although much of it is tasty finger food. Some of the pieces are more rhetorical broadsides than anything else (for example, Emma Goldman's 'Philosophy of Atheism,' Mencken's 'Memorial Service,' Dawkins' 'Gerin Oil' and 'Atheists for Jesus,' and Penn Jillette's 'There Is No God'). Moreover, even when Hitchens does include selections from especially rigorous thinkers, they tend to focus on religion rather than theism (the selections from Hobbes and Sagan especially illustrate this, as does the flip and interminable one from Bertrand Russell). But to give Hitchens his due, other selections are strong (Carl van Doren's 'Why I Am an Unbeliever,' Dawkins' 'Why There Almost Certainly Is No God,' Dennett's 'A Working Definition of Religion,' and Steven Weinberg's 'What About God?').

If, however, by 'essential' Hitchens means some of the best known polemics against God-belief, then the title is a bit more accurate (although one wonders why influential polemical defenders of atheism such as Baron d'Holbach, Robert Ingersoll, Mikhail Bukanin, Vladimir Lenin, or Mao Tse Tung didn't make the cut). Most of the essays don't argue so much as insist, usually in stark binary terms, that atheism is right and theism is perniciously wrong. Many of them, as I've already mentioned, tend to conflate religion with God-belief, going after the former and neglecting the latter. And almost all of them, while guaranteed to tickle the atheist and infuriate an insecure theist, fail to provide good arguments for their positions. But then this isn't surprising, given that the editor of the collection extraordinarily compares Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Aquinas to Osama bin Laden in his entertaining but injudicious introduction (p. xxiv). When it comes to religious belief, Hitchens is an angry bulldog, and bulldogs rarely possess subtlety.

Readers who wish to move beyond essential polemics to essential arguments might consider The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, The Impossibility of God, and The Improbability of God, all edited by Michael Martin. S. T. Joshi is the editor of Atheism, a collection of essays (many of which Hitchens seems to have lifted wholecloth for The Portable Essays) also worth examining. Louise Antony's Philosophers Without God is a well-written and insightful collection. George Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God is a rigorous defense of atheism. Like Joshi's anthology, though, Smith's book focuses exclusively on philosophical arguments for atheism and neglects more recently crafted scientific ones. Finally, Michel Onfray's recent Atheist Manifesto offers a good introduction to atheism Continental-style.

If you've been looking for a one-stop shop to explain why there are people who do not believe in a creator, this would be the place. Not so much an exposition as an anthology tied together with long introductions by Hitchens, you'll find a lot of perspectives here. Helpfully it includes more than just anti-Christian polemics: there are several reviews of Islamic thought and the Qu'ran which will be instructive and which are sufficiently balanced as not to be one straw man after another.

It could have been better. Another reviewer comments on this book not so much being atheist as anti-theist and I think they've hit something (notice I used "anti-Christian" and not "non-Christian" above). Certainly Hitchens himself is anti-religion and not just non-religious. But if you buy into his argument that religion is A Bad Thing(TM) then you also need to be on the attack. He does, and so he is. And that's fine, or it would be in a different book. But in an anthology it feels more appropriate to let the extracts speak for themselves without layering on top of them. Or at least it does to me.

In view of my preceding title it may be wondered why I marked the book for three stars. I did it in recognition of the author's writing skill and erudition, of his somewhat justified criticism of dogma--especially today's violent expressions of it--and a little because of pity for his evidently sincerely misguided hatreds.

It seems for me unnecessary to go into the body of the book, which I haven't read and is featuring other authors, the reasonably long Introduction sufficing, in addition to comments on the Acknowledgments and the dedication, at which I start (unmarked page v).

The dedication is to a now deceased Holocaust survivor, and as a survivor myself I am thoroughly appalled by the twisting by Mr. Hitchens into "moral fortitude" some unfortunately very dismaying remarks by that survivor. That survivor, an atheist, complained for his own reasons about an old fellow-prisoner in Auschwitz because of the latter's praying ("thanking God because he has not been chosen [for] the gas-chamber" at the time), the survivor concluding with: "If I was God, I would spit at [the man's] prayer."

Thank God he wasn't God. He also wrote, on being tempted to pray when perceiving the imminence of death (there is something to the saying there are no atheists in foxholes): "A prayer...would have been...blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a nonbeliever is capable". Nonbelieving seems itself quite a religion. As seen, we find a variety of views even among the same people in the same predicament, my concern here being the upside-down morality of such as Hitchens, who thinks that what is meritorious is spitting at the praying man, rather than comforting him.

Turning to other parts of the book, the author's attitude can in a nutshell be found in the Acknowledgements (p.xi) and at the end of the Introduction (p.xxvi). In the first he notes his indebtedness to a group that rejects "the absurd and wicked claims of the religious", and in the second he speaks of "resistance to...faith [in the] combat with humanity's oldest enemy". What an extreme of one-sidedness and vilification.

Regarding God himself, whom he consistently spells with a small "g" although the names of even the worst villains are accorded a capital, he attributes to him (p.xvi) "an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship" and again (p.xxii) "a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of thought-crime, and regarded us as its private property even after we died...How happy we ought to be, at the reflection that there exists not a shred of respectable evidence to support such a horrible hypothesis. And how grateful we should be to those...who repudiated this utter negation of human freedom."

The author should consider "reflection" on the laws of nature, by which he must abide unconditionally. God is conceived as the source of these laws and of any other he deems requisite as creator of Mr. Hitchens and everything else. The freedom Mr. Hitchens mentions was also granted, not negated, by God. Otherwise Mr. Hitchens's every action would be forced by inexorable physical laws, making him unable to as much as feed himself. The nonexistence of a "shred of respectable evidence" he speaks about is likewise false. The evidence may not be "respectable" to those he bows to, but they, too, are fallible. Mr. Hitchens talks as if he were a scientist and logician but is an authority in neither. He continually depends on natural selection as fact, and on absence of demonstration as refutation of God. Both can be disconfirmed, as I explained in other reviews here and more fully in On Proof for Existence of God, and Other Reflective Inquiries.

Mr. Hitchens expectably argues for a moral and beautiful atheist life, exceeding yet one under God. He says (pp.xvi-xvii) "I derive...satisfactions...from being of assistance to a fellow creature" or that the "Golden Rule is innate in us", condemning doing "a right action or avoid[ing] a wrong one [merely] for the hope of a divine reward or the fear of a divine retribution". Who do you think gave you the "innate" satisfaction in helping others? It wasn't Darwin. Notwithstanding your self-satisfaction of being moral, there is countless evidence that not only "sociopaths" and "psychopaths" act immorally left to themselves. As you say, "societies [don't] tolerate" various crimes, and that is why we have governments with laws applying to all. Similarly, concerning the beautiful you say (pp.xxii-xxiii) "there may be found a sense of awe and magnificence that does not depend at all on any invocation of the supernatural. Indeed, nobody armed by art and culture and literature and philosophy is likely to be anything but bored and sickened by", giving unlikely tales ending with, "babblings from the beyond". Again, your elitist pleasures are not likely to be shared by most, but more pertinently, whatever beauty is perceived in the world, it appears hollow without promise, and is more convincing as a gift of God than as accidental result of aimless forces.

Most objectionable in this book, however, may be its utmost besmirching of opponents, recognized even in its mild forms as the ad hominem fallacy, of wanting to win an argument by personal attack instead of reasoned presentation.

This is a fantastic collection. For anyone just discovering their atheism I highly recommend this book - it brings together writings by atheists or agnostics over the last 2000 or so years, making some incredibly compelling arguments. I'm only halfway through at the moment, but I especially love Mark Twain's discussion of the fly.

While this book has a wealth of different voices from influential people on the subject, at 500 pages, it is not so portable. I was expecting something more pocket sized.

I thought it was pretty amazing to read that even as far back as 55 B.C., people had these thoughts: Lucretius. He even argued that the world can be accounted for in terms of atoms that are in perpetual motion. 55 B.C., that's pretty cool. Jumping forward in time, the piece by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1811) is way more explicit than I expected. He was expelled from Oxford and Cambridge universities, but his text survived. Dawkins, Dennett and Weinberg were inspiring. After reading a bunch though, I got a little bit depressed, because they were mostly about the bad aspects of religion, less about the good aspects of atheism. I want to see the sun. I see the sun, it's right there. Look, look! Maybe an idea for the next edition.

This is a compendium of what many famous persons had to say about religion. The book contains a carefully selected assortment of atheists expressions of their nonbelief in god. I have found the book to be most informative and to broaden the basis for my own thoughts on religion.

This is a wonderful collection of readings by nonbelievers and freethinkers, compiled for the person who wants more than zippy quotes, or who is looking for the context of those quotes. Over forty authors (including Hobbes, Spinoza, Karl Marx, George Eliot, up to present day Harris, Dawkins, etc.) are represented by almost 500 pages of text, with enough of an excerpt to give a feeling for their work.

Christopher Hitchens' latest work is quite impressive. However I think that the title is a bit misleading. It definitely is not something I would define as "portable", the tome being several hundred pages in length.

Other than that, it's great.

Just wish there was a more "Portable" version of this one.

Thanks to Christopher Hitchens for compiling the atheist arguments in one collection! I gave portions of this book to the high school theology/philosophy course I teach and even Juniors in high school easily dismantled the arguments. So convenient for the theist to have all these writings in one place to show just how irrational most of the atheist arguments are. Thanks again Chris!

Admittedly I have not taken the opportunities in life to read and understand the full works of free thinkers, agnostics of the ages and atheists. Nor have I had the concentration, intellect or skill to wade through them in detail to glean the essence of their ideas.

I have, however, enjoyed the to the point, focused works of Christopher Hitchens. Using his very perceptive nature and exceptional education and vocabulary cuts through erudition to speak plainly in his works of critical review and analysis of life events of public and historical figures. He makes big words and ideas understandable.

His most recent popular works on humanity and god(s) are much easier to read than personally going to the sources of these thought, But these works leave the reader with a sense of guilt for not verifying withthe original, or reading it in depth. Now, Hitchens culls his favored sources and anthologizes many of them here, adds a dash of new thinkers and presents a hulking challenge. Read these condensations -- if you would assuage your guilt and bridge the holes in your understanding. But do not take fright! The oieces gathered are not ponderous-- just direct, many in the language of the times when they were written.

The Portable Atheist (Unabridged)

This all starts with a poetic translation of Lucretius. I had to get out a narrative text literal translation to decipher and compare the way this one piece is presented, but this short exercise warmed parts of my brain I have not used in 40 or more years,

The presentations of Spinoza, Hume and later thinkers are much easier to comprehend but are probably best taken one chapter at a time -- leaving time for cogitation and pondering.

Through these pages you learn not only the development of critical thought and free thinking vis-a-vis god, religion and inquiry -- but the seem to find the base for Hitchens very rational approach to life, the universe and everything -- through doubt and discovery though the last 2000 years. These works seem to offer a compendium of how Hitchens "got that way."

I strongly recommend this volume to anyone who would take their investigations of spirituality, thought, religion and the supernatural into perspective of the growth of mans thought through the ages.

This may have been a good book. Unfortunately, it was WAY TOO BIG for a semi-invalid to hold and read! So I managed to read only the excellent introduction

This book has some good essays and introduced me to several outstanding ideas that have never ocurred to me. It is a rather large volume and it can be heavy going at time. Some essays I skipped altogether because they were too cerebral for me. Otherwise, it certainly is worth a look.

This collection is just what I was looking for, a wide ranging collection of essays from Lucretius to Ayyan Hirst Ali. I confess that I inhaled all of it - yet it is, and will remain, even better in the re-reading, as well as being an essential reference.

Being introduced to the Richard Le Gallienne translation of the Rubaiyat alone makes the book well worth it. Thank you, Christopher !!

Any larger, and the book would lose the "Portable" in its title. I eagerly await a second volume.

Come to think of it, I've never seen anyone passing out atheist tracts on a street corner or in a parking lot or anywhere else, for that matter. Nor, when the doorbell rings, do I have to worry about being hammered with some unbeliver's version of the atheist's bible. No, a person pretty much has to seek out ammunition for unbelief on his own. For darn sure, no big name foundation, is going to set up a TV channel or any other promotional that goes against the nation's number one industry-- organized religion. So, as atheists in a nation officially "under God", unbelievers are pretty much on their own.

But organized or not, deniers have been around for some time, as Hitchens' collection of heretical writings demonstrates. Now, I'm not very conversant about the myriad selections available to him, but it looks like the volume is heavy on 20th century works, such as, the literary (Orwell, Conrad, Updike, et al.); the scientific (Sagan, Einstein, Dennett, et al.); the philosophic (Russell, Ayer, Grayling); along with intellectual troublemakers from the world of Islam (Rushdie, Warraq, Ali). It's this latter cateory that distinguishes the collection, since many of the others are oft anthologized. What's generally missing (except for Mencken) are selections from the rabble-rousers, such as Darrow, Ingersoll, and Bradlaugh whose pulpits did so much to fend off past generations of Bible-belters. Also, readers looking for material on the classic proofs of god's existence (ontology, cosmology, et al)--. including the classic disproof from the existence of evil (theodicy)-- should probably look elsewhere.

Now, I respect Hitchens as a public figure for using his high-profile to press the case for unbelief. He's stuck his neck out on the airways big time. But it looks to me like this collection was rushed out in the wake of his previous success with God Is Not Great. The entries follow one another in roughly chronological order which means they're not grouped by topic. This may amount to an expedient way of ordering the material, but chronology also scatters the topics instead of concentrating them. Thus readers wanting to focus, say, on morality's basis in religion or miracles and natural law, must do their own sorting. Also absent is a bibliography or explanatory footnotes that could be helpful to the less initiated. In short, the work is not researcher-friendly. Then too, Hitchen's introductory comments are brief, of varying quality, and follow no particular format. Readers may need no introduction to Einstein's credentials, but I'd sure like to know who Elizabeth Anderson is and what she's published. Her essay on morality and religion qualifies as a modern classic in my little book.

Anyway, I'm glad there's a readership large enough to follow up on Hitchens' polemical earlier book whatever the purpose. And while I don't expect to see pamphleteers on the sidewalk anytime soon, it looks like interest is growing.

It is very easy to understand the reasoning behind Christopher Hitchens' own ideas on religion after you've gone through the parade of fascinating works in this book. Intertwined with very subdued--perhaps an understatement, having his latest works in recent memory--commentaries from Hitchens, you are transported through the ages of reason and unreason, starting with the fascinating thoughts of the Roman philosopher Lucretius (highly influenced by the then "heretically" denounced Epicureans of Greece) around the, said, birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and ending in the 20th century, with Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud among the most notable luminaries.

What is most interesting in the end, however, is perhaps not an obvious conclusion, have you previously been impressed with Cristopher Hitchens' own writings. For, as good a writer as Hitchens truly is, it becomes very palpable how he, along with most authors of the recent past, absolutely pales in comparison to the grandeur of thought, wit, faculties of reason and vivid imagination of these masters of our collective literary heritage.

This book, which is very appropriately named, should be mandatory reading for all humans out there, who are the slightest bit concerned with their own existence, and how they relate to this world and its continuously morphing state of affairs. This world--the only one that exists.

This is a great collection of great writing from authors across time and cultures. This book is really good for people like me who don't have the time to read *everything* out there by *everyone* who *ever* said *anything* about religion. You get lots of kernels. The indepthness of the historical writings is fascinating. You get to see how the same exact observations and silliness involving religion has been examined and noted over time. The new lecture by McEwan (my favorite author) was an excellent addition. The poems were striking, though readily available on the web. Highly recommended.

This is a wonderful collection of essays written by many of the brightest minds in history that explores the revelance of religious thought through the ages and its effects on world civilizations down to the present. Belief in a living God, miracles, life after death, heaven, hell are challenged by scientific fact. The conclusion is that there is probably not a God. However, regardless of ones personal beliefs, this is a must read to appreciate how the worlds religions came to be and how they have changed over the centuries in response to the discoveries of science.

excellent compendium of basic 'rationalist' and 'enlightenment' views of the world and needed challenge to renewed impulses toward 'theocratic' compromised in our national dialogue ... and a bit fun to see how much 'atheist' views take on a pretty 'religious' conviction of it's rightness.

Hitchens prefaces his book by telling us that the prehistory of our species is ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which religion is used to identify not just the wrong explanation but the wrong culprit as well. The few men of science and reason and medicine had all they could do to keep their libraries and laboratories intact, or their very lives safe from harm.

Today's typical "justification" for religion involves charitable or humanitarian work - obviously this says nothing about the veracity of the belief systems involved. All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world; atheists, on the other hand argue that this world is all we have and that it is our duty to make the most of it.

It is one thing, per Hitchens, to believe that the magnificence of the natural order strongly implies an ordering force; quite another to say this creative force cares for our human affairs, and it is interested in with whom we have sex and how, as well as the outcome of battles and wars (and even athletic contests). Even accepting Jesus' birth, it still does not prove he was more than one among many shamans and magicians of the day.

Einstein took the view that the miracle is that there are no miracles.

Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god in which he does not believe - atheists simply go one step further and add another god to not believe in.

Sadly, there are the seemingly endless wars and persecutions that go on in the name of religion. It is almost comical that as the Iranians pursue the imminent return of the Twelfth Imam and reinforce their apocalyptic talk by acquiring doomsday weaponry, Jewish settlers hope, by stealing the land of others in accordance with biblical directions, to bring Armageddon in their own way, while their chief backers (American evangelical fundamentalists) are simultaneously trying to teach pseudo-science, criminalize homosexuality, forbid stem-cell research, and display Mosaic law in courtrooms. At the same time, the Pope maintains that condoms are worse than AIDS.

The bulk of "The Portable Atheist" consists of readings from mostly eminent minds, going back to the early Greeks. My favorites were Elizabeth Anderson, Bertrand Russell, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Summarizing, the biggest take-aways of this book were to show how tenuous the belief in religion is, the almost laughable inconsistencies involve, how it has blocked progress through the ages, and the almost unlimited misery it has brought to mankind - throughout the ages.

I bought this book on the strength of the reviews portrayed on this website. It is essentially a compendium of largely incomprehensible essays, many of which have little to do with atheism. The first two essays are actually poems that I found to be irritating. The next several essays are deep philosophical treatises that are long-winded and very tough to read without being overcome by boredom. After sixty some odd pages of trying to find information worthy of my time, I decided to skim the remaining essays to find items that might deal a little more directly with the topic. There are scattered good essays throughout the text but I found most of what is contained in the book to be unbelievably tedious, off the subject, and boring. If you are the kind of reader that can tolerate wading through long stretches of largely inconsequential and incomprehensible gibberish to gather an occasional pearl of wisdom, you may like this book. Otherwise, look elsewhere for a better anthology.

After the brilliant - but short - introduction by Hitchens, the rest of the anthology offers a diverse assortment of historical writings. All interesting .. some more succinct than others - but some pretty slow reading to plough through! However, I like the size of the selections so that even with heavy reading I enjoy almost every author. A great companion to Hitchens' "God is Not Great" ... which is must reading for anyone of intellect and an open mind to the fallacies of religious dogma ,.

Great book but I suspect books in this genre, either for or against atheism, are only read by those already in agreement with the author. So much for debate. I guess with the phrase "Great book" my position is exposed. What has always puzzled me about christianity is that it insists that unlike the prophets of other monotheisms, it's prophet is divine, that he is a god. And the first 5 of the 10 commandments command that you believe this and behave accordingly or else. Also puzzling is why christianity thinks this control is so necessary. Mohammad and Buddha both insisted they were not gods. Instead of commandments with a capital "C" Buddha suggested: "Be a lamp unto yourselves.
Believe nothing on the faith of traditions,
......
Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it.
Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past.
Do not believe what you yourself have imagined,
persuading yourself that a God inspires you.
Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests.
After examination, believe what you yourself have tested
and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto. Me, given the choice I'll stick with character building instead of obedience. The correctness of the second half of the 10 commandments doesn't require a GOD and lightning bolts (or was that just Hollywood), they are just life's practicalities, like drive on the right in USA and the left in England, social lubricants.
More of a rant then a review but if you lean my way this book will make you more comfortable with such thoughts. If you lean the other way, may GOD help you for you aren't going to learn how to do it yourself

In a world being swamped with 6000-year earth age advocates and mind-numbing religious attacks on science, with some U.S. presidential candidates in the lead, The Portable Atheist is an island of sanity and respite from irrationality and the unending barrage of misinformation from "believers". From the Taliban to the fundamentalist and evangelical command posts, whether on "Christian" TV and radio or the minaret, temple, or store front hotbeds, common sense, science, and rational thinking have never been so daily assaulted. Revel in the words of those who have fought the good fight against Bronze Age morality and intellectual dysfunction. The Portable Atheist is a companion you will want by your side. Great reading, instructive, and, most of all, provides hope that clear thinking might just have a chance.

As neither an atheist nor a follower of a particular religion, I found this book contained thought provoking information. Even though much of it I disagreed with, I believe that as with any good book it should become the basis for stimulating intelligent debate. This book, and others like it, present an opportunity to do as we all should, which is remain open minded and tolerant of all viewpoints, and by so doing gain a better understanding of different perspectives on life.

Great collection of secular quotes and articles from books and other publishings. A great piece of weaponry for the non-religious and I really enjoy flipping through the pages looking for inspiration.

Christopher Hitchens's book GOD IS NOT GREAT is as good an atheist manifesto as you're likely to find. Mr. Hitchens's new anthology, THE PORTABLE ATHEIST, is surely as good an atheist anthology as you're likely to find.

What a list of contributors! Darwin, Marx, Einstein, Spinoza, Orwell, Lovecraft, Larkin, Dawkins, Sagan, and many more. And what an entertaining introduction and running commentaries Mr. Hitchens has written for the book!

But like all arguments for atheism, the innumerable arguments advanced in this book are ultimately unconvincing.

I shall list only the most obvious objections to the same tired old points that are rehashed (often quite eloquently) again and again in this book.

1) Just because many (or even all) religious symbols and dogma are man-made does not even that they don't reflect, albeit imperfectly, "heavenly" concepts.

2) If religion is simply superstition, then why do so many human beings seem "wired" to have religious faith? If evolution can explain everything, then why has the so-called "God gene" (supposing it exists, and I think it does) proven so durable and well-night irresistible?

3) Not all people of faith are fundamentalists. Some of us find fundamentalism and religious faith incompatible, and fundamentalism blasphemous. And countless millions of us have no problem with evolution.

4) Can people still behave ethically without religious faith? Yes--as far as secular ethical standards force you to go.

But as a priest I knew once said, the Golden Rule isn't simply about "doing unto others"--it's about "going that extra mile."

Religious faith (especially Christianity) constantly pushes the believer forward--to strengthen and expand his faith, to forgive the people he hates the most, to search and fathom out his heart, to reform, to expand his faith on a personal, psychological, spiritual, and intellectual basis.

5) Can anyone who looks at a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition doubt that there is a God, and that He's not a supreme designer--even if he worked through evolution?

I was a tad bit skeptical about purchasing this product, but now that I have read a big portion of it, it really is a great collection. While yes many of the articles and excerpts can be easily found for free on the internet, the convenience of it all in one place, plus the lesser know authors AND the extremely good introduction by Hitchens makes this a product worth purchasing.

A great collection edited by my favorite author Christopher Hitchens. I'll use this great book to combat religious oppression and craziness. Excellent compilation for people like me who would like to take the fight to the religious fanatics.

The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens, is a great selection of how atheism has transformed into what it is today. Hitchens' introduction itself is an astounding tour de force that should not be skipped. In his introduction alone, Hitchen's lays out the foundation and positive attributes of atheism. This is crucial as many people have the common misunderstanding that atheists are pessimists or discontented. He also makes the genuinely important point that in order to believe in one of the three major monotheisms, you have to believe that the heavens watched our species for at least one hundred and fifty thousand years with "indifference, and then- and only in the last six thousand years at the very least - decided that it was time to intervene as well as redeem." He concedes that it is preposterous to believe such a heinous thing - for it would be cruel if true. His introduction is intelligent, convincing and witty - and it doesn't stop there.

The selections in this book show the evolution of atheism (or at least nontheism) from early critics of religion such as: Benedict De Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes and David Hume to more of a middle stage (Darwin, George Eliot, Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell) and then to modern-day critics like: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Steven Weinberg, Daniel Dennett, Carl Sagan, Victor Stenger, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many more. Another great thing is the book is helpfully arranged in chronological order. All beliefs aside, the selections in this book are powerfully argued and well written. I'd recommend it to anyone with a hunger for the truth and an open mind.

The lengthy introduction will be familiar to those who have read other works by Hitchens and seen his lectures and debates. If you like the introduction, definitely get God Is Not Great. This introduction is basically a recitation of his arguments against religion and faith, with copious examples. I am not trying to belittle it - any believer who is unfamiliar with Hitchens should definitely read the introduction, and if they are surprised by what they read, should move on to God Is Not Great for more such historical examples that for whatever reason have not penetrated their protective outer coating.

Following the introduction are 47 excellent selections with brief introductions by Hitchens, spanning two millennia (although there is a distinct gap of about 1500 years, the reasons for which should be obvious to all).

I just love the PW review of this collection; it unintentionally but so smartly and clearly demonstrates the problem of those who profess to have "faith." The reviewer claims to love the collection, the authors, etc., but remains critical because the specific content of the collection, and by implication, atheists in general, reject a form of fundamentalism or faith that "intelligent believers" have long since discarded. Surely the very concept "intelligent believer" (at least those words put together in that order) are an oxymoron; to the contrary, anyone of intelligence would not believe because "taking it on faith" means believing in something without evidence, substantiation or support. Therefore, those who profess such belief do so without intelligence! Moreover, by implication, such a person cannot be critical of someone who "believes" in, say, the most absurd thing the imagination can concock, say, the tooth fairy or the easter bunny. It is time to take the next step in evolution and jettison the mystical explanation ("god") now that science has finally progressed and triumphed.

An excellent compilation of atheist writings, with a great intro written by Hitchens. Also, this book is 499 pages long, not 384.

I wonder what Hitchens would have said if he learned that all religions have the same source(History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)).History of religions may look as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.

Christopher "Hitch" Hitchens is the literate jackanapes of the New Atheism, an unofficial affiliation that includes Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris, A.C. Grayling, Victor Stenger, PZ Myers, and others. Hitch once quipped that Dawkins had been invited, along with him, to present atheism so that the audience could also get a more moderate view of the position. (If you don't know why that's funny, read Dawins's "The God Delusion," which is uncompromisingly immoderate.) Hitch's book, "god is Not Great" cemented his reputation as the Sweeney Todd of antitheism, for whom words are razors and arrogant ignorance is the prey. This was the guy, after all, who several years ago wrote a slashing diatribe against Mother Teresa.

The introduction that Hitchens writes for this volume is just excellent. Funny, barbed, witty...a real showcase of his rhetorical skill. And the selections made for this book are uniformly excellent. It's easy to quibble that this should have been included or that could have been left out, but on the whole, this volume represents a compendium of some of the best literature in atheology. From Hume to Penn Jillette, Hobbes to Salman Rushdie, some of the most brilliant, sharpest criticisms of the notion of gods and the practices of religion are represented.

I know too many believers to think that something as mere as reading a great many genius writers making mountains of sense could change their minds; but certainly this tome presents a substantial challenge to easy assumptions, and a buffet banquet for thought.