The Portable Atheist

Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

By: Christopher Hitchens

Narrated by: Nicholas Ball

Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of God Is Not Great, a provocative and entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages with never-before-published pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices past and present that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you'll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others well-known and lesser known. And they're all set in context and commented upon as only Christopher Hitchens, "political and literary journalist extraordinaire" (Los Angeles Times), can.

Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will speak to you and engage you every step of the way.

©2007 Christopher Hitchens (P)2007 Phoenix Books, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A fascinating collection of readings from some of the West's greatest thinkers." ( Publishers Weekly)

Narration seemed a little, off?

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Maybe, it would depend on if they were already a fan of audio-books. I have enjoyed a couple others by Hitchens that he narrated. But Nicholas Balls reading, to me, seemed a little detached from the subject matter. I understand that the process needs to be completed as quickly as possible but, again I didn't feel as engaged due to the 'peppiness' the book was read with.

Would you be willing to try another one of Nicholas Ball’s performances?

Probably not.

The narrator messed up the content of this book

Would you listen to The Portable Atheist again? Why?

I think I will buy the book instead. The narrator's voice was too harsh - I felt "un-Hitch'ed".

Would you be willing to try another one of Nicholas Ball’s performances?

I don't think so.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No.

Any additional comments?

I'll edit my review when I have properly read the book rather than trying to listen to it.

Russell and Rushdie made a great finale.

good to read about the many ways philosophers throughout the ages have found religion to be less than Devine.

Love Christopher Hitchens philosophy but...

I have always wanted to read Christopher Hitchens books because of his morale views and publicized television appearances; but, after reading this book I realized hes very troubled and a difficult person to learn from. I feel bad for Christopher Hitchens, it seems like this book expresses his troubles in how they repeat in his head. Just to explain himself he had to restate, reiterate, and go into more analyzation of the same information with different metophors over and over.

I wish I loved this book as an atheist but I can't.

This is ABRIDGED

I would love to give it 5 stars, and would for the actual book, but the Audible recording is not unabridged as advertised. Get the book instead!

Great resource, difficult audiobook

This is an excellent book and the reading is okay, even if it is not Hitchens. The main difficulty in listening to this as an audiobook is that it is very difficult to tell when the narration from Hitchens ends and the excerpts from other authors begin and vice versa; for that reason, the print version is better as a resource. This is a book you'll want to come back to a refer to specific passages, which is almost impossible in this format. Also, I wonder if a couple of the other reviewers downloaded both parts. I had the entire book -- unabridged. If you're looking for resources in this area, Hitchens' "God is Not Great" is essential and this is a good supplement. Hitchens provides the most comprehensive discussion of atheism available.

Great content, horrible production.

I don't know how much the audiobook might differ from the original writings, but the narrator is not only super dry and bad at vocal inflection, but the individual segments are not well set up or organized in any way. It's a fairly mind numbing slog through what would otherwise be fascinating and thought provoking philosophical journeys. Really disappointed in this production, couldn't even finish it.

A fantastic ABRIDGED collection

This is a fantastic collection of readings that I wish all humans would read. Having been indoctrinated from day one in religious nonsense and not taught how the world really works until I got to college, this certainly would have changed my life had I read it in high school prior to being exposed to truths in college rather than small-town Christian versions of the sciences and philosophy. Also, given the current state of Christian nationalism infiltrating the leadership of the United States, the writings included in this book were a welcome break as we further drift away from intellectual enlightenment, reason, and rational thinking.

This collection was put together by the late, great, self-proclaimed "anti-theist" Christopher Hitchens. The book starts out with a lengthy introduction by Hitchens, which may be the best piece included! It's like a laser-focused summarized version of a Hitchens book, so eloquent and biting. He takes down the idea of religion and drops the mic before we even officially get going.

My only complaint with this collection is with Audible. This is an abridged version and I missed out on probably close to half the essays based on the table of contents shown on Google Books. I'm OK with that as I'll be buying the paper version of this the next time I see it at a used bookstore. Audible couldn't even add proper breaks between the readings; rather, divided this in to nine random hour-plus chapters. Ridiculous. Do better, Audible.

Some of the authors I missed out on I'm familiar with an probably have already read what Hitchens included in the paper book - Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, and Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett are amongst them.

The only essay that didn't work for me in this collection was the Karl Marx essay. It was German-centric and felt overly political, and I just wasn't interested in it.

Some of the standout essays in my opinion were:

David Hume, "The Natural History of Religion and Miracles. Followed by James Boswell, "An Account of My Last Interview with David Hume, Esq." David Hume was the leading Scottish philosopher during the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment and a brilliant essayist. He was a brilliant mind, ahead of his time. I've visited his statue on the Royal Mile and his grave in Edinburgh. The Boswell interview gives Hume fans a look in to the life of the great man.

Charles Darwin, "Autobiography". I have Darwin's autobiography but have not read it yet. This fascinating essay in Darwin's words details his conversion from religious youth to non-religious naturalist.

Leslie Stephen, "An Agnostic's Apology". I thought this was one of the best essays in the bunch. Mr. Stephen was a 19th century Londoner and one of the ringleaders and President of the organization which eventually became what is now Humanists UK.

Mark Twain, "Thoughts of God, From Fables of Man": Bible Teaching and Religious Practice, from Europe and Elsewhere and A Pen Warmed Up In Hell. Witty and well-written as you would expect.

and also right up there as my favorite essay:

Salman Rushdie, "Imagine There's No Heaven" from A Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen. The great writer contributed his fantastic essay to this book of messages to the six billionth person. I'll close with his fantastic quote from this essay:

"The ancient wisdoms are modern nonsenses. Live in your own time, use what we know, and as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you, and put aside childish things."

On and on and on

I love the subject.. but the narrator just goes on and on and on, without pause

Good book, frustrating audio formatting

This is an excellent collection of writings, but the formatting of the audiobook is incredibly frustrating. The Audible content is divided into chapters based on length, rather than being divided by the content. It would be much more useful if each “chapter” of the audio file were a single reading, and infinitely more useful if they were labeled. And how much work would it take to organize the Audible file accordingly? It is incredibly difficult to try to find a specific selection from the collection. For example, I’d love to go back and listen to the Thomas Hardy poem again, but it would be too difficult to locate.

If there was a rating for production, I’d give it Zero stars. If someone at Audible or the publisher would take the time to better organize the file so that is usable to the listener as an anthology, I’d give the book 4 stars all around.