Very Comprehensive, but definitely not portable.

books:


	• The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever Christopher Hitchens Da Capo Press, 2007 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very Comprehensive, but definitely not portable.

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 for doing the leg work, Hitch...

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!

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Mostly well done

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.

Complete range of solid thought

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.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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