Thomas Bunting, charming, chaotic, & deeply untruthful, is in despair. His marriage is disintegrating, & his academic career is in ruins: instead of completing his philosophy Ph D, he is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork, a vast atheistic project he has privately entitled ' The Book Against God'. But when his father is suddenly taken ill Thomas returns home, to the tiny village in the north of England where his father still works as a parish priest. Thomas hopes that he may finally be able to communicate honestly with his father, a brilliant & formidable Christian example, & sort out his wayward life. But Thomas is a chronic liar, as well as an atheist, & he finds, instead, that once at home he only falls back into the disastrous & evasive patterns of his childhood years. ...

Many years ago Gerard Hernshaw & his friends 'commissioned' one of their number to write a political book. Time passes & opinions change. ' Why should we go on supporting a book which we detest?' Rose Curtland asks. ' The brotherhood of Western intellectuals versus the book of history, ' Jenkin Riderhood suggests. The theft of a wife further embroils the situation. Moral indignation must be separated from political disagreement. Tamar Hernshaw has a different rouble & a terrible secret. Can one die of shame? In another quarter a suicide pact seems the solution. Duncan Cambus thinks that since it is a tragedy, someone must die. Someone dies. Rose, who has gone on loving without hope, at least deserves a reward. ...

Many years ago Gerard Hernshaw & his friends 'commissioned' one of their number to write a political book. Time passes & opinions change. ' Why should we go on supporting a book which we detest?' Rose Curtland asks. ' The brotherhood of Western intellectuals versus the book of history, ' Jenkin Riderhood suggests. The theft of a wife further embroils the situation. Moral indignation must be separated from political disagreement. Tamar Hernshaw has a different rouble & a terrible secret. Can one die of shame? In another quarter a suicide pact seems the solution. Duncan Cambus thinks that since it is a tragedy, someone must die. Someone dies. Rose, who has gone on loving without hope, at least deserves a reward. ...

1543 saw the publication of one of the most significant scientific works ever written: De revolutionibus ( On the Revolutions ...

1543 saw the publication of one of the most significant scientific works ever written: De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), in which Nicolaus Copernicus presented a radically different structure of the cosmos by placing the sun, & not the earth, at the centre of the universe. But did anyone take notice? Harvard astrophysicist Owen Gingerich was intrigued by the bold claim made by Arthur Koestler in his bestselling The Sleepwalkers that sixteenth-century Europe paid little attention to the groundbreaking, but dense, masterpiece. Gingerich embarked on a thirty-year odyssey to examine every extant copy to prove Koestler wrong-Logging thousands of hours & hundreds of thousands of miles Gingerich uncovered a treasure trove of material on the life of a book & the evolution of an idea. His quest led him to copies once owned by saints, heretics, & scallywags, by musicians & movie stars; some easily accessible, others almost lost to time, politics & the black market. Part biography of a book & a man, part bibliographic & bibliophilic quest, Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read is an utterly captivating piece of writing, a testament to the power both of books & the love of books. ...

Can we do without religion? Can we have ethics without God? Is there such thing as 'atheistic spirituality'? In this powerful book, the internationally bestselling author André Comte-Sponville presents a philosophical exploration of atheism
- & reaches startling conclusions.

Atheists, Comte-Sponville argues, are no less interested in a spiritual life than religious believers. But by allowing the concept of spirituality to become intertwined with religion & dogma, humanity has lost touch with the nature of a true spiritual existence.

Using rigorous, reasoned arguments & clear, concise, & often humorous prose Comte-Sponville draws on both Eastern & Western philosophical traditions to propose the atheistic alternative to religion, based on the human need to connect to each other & to the universe. In doing so, he offers a convincing treatise on a new form of spiritual life.




...

Can we do without religion? Can we have ethics without God? Is there such thing as 'atheistic spirituality'? In this powerful book, the internationally bestselling author André Comte-Sponville presents a philosophical exploration of atheism
- & reaches startling conclusions.

Atheists, Comte-Sponville argues, are no less interested in a spiritual life than religious believers. But by allowing the concept of spirituality to become intertwined with religion & dogma, humanity has lost touch with the nature of a true spiritual existence.

Using rigorous, reasoned arguments & clear, concise, & often humorous prose Comte-Sponville draws on both Eastern & Western philosophical traditions to propose the atheistic alternative to religion, based on the human need to connect to each other & to the universe. In doing so, he offers a convincing treatise on a new form of spiritual life.




...

Split between dark & light, this book records the dichotomy of human experience with unflinching force & clarity. It deals with break-up, depression, illness & death. But it also reveals an intense involvement with nature & a capacity for healing & love. There are intimate personal poems reflecting on relationships with people & creatures; poems which enter the lives of real & imaginary characters, Keats & Medea & Blodeuwedd, for example; & also poems which engage with paintings & political events.

Set in a territory which connects child with adult, myth with reality, the personal with the universal, the book shows a poet fully open to the richness & possibilities of the world but also aware of its violence & pain, not as a remote observer but as someone who is a part of it.

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