Religion for Atheists

Anyone who has encountered Alain de Botton's writing already knows that he is a bastion of sanity, compassion, and open-minded inquiry in a polarized world. His latest highly readable treatise is no exception. Carefully sorting through the claims of religion, both practical and numinous, de Botton analyzes what kind of worthwhile practices can be rescued from the larger, harder-to-swallow theological constructs.

May 25: On this day in 1938 Raymond Carver was born. Carver's poem "Luck," about a nine-year-old who wakes to an empty house and the leftovers of his parents' party, is all too autobiographical: "What luck, I thought. / Years later,…

Angry robots! Aren't they all? Well, not the line of fine science fiction and fantasy books that comes to readers under the rubric Angry Robot. In fact, their offerings…

advertisement