Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt

By: Herb Silverman, Richard Dawkins - foreword

Narrated by: Herb Silverman, Richard Dawkins

Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

In this deeply revealing and engaging autobiography, Herb Silverman tells his iconoclastic life story. He takes the listener from his childhood as an Orthodox Jew in Philadelphia, where he stopped fasting on Yom Kippur to test God's existence, to his adult life in the heart of the Bible Belt, where he became a legendary figure within America's secular activist community and remains one of its most beloved leaders.

Never one to shy from controversy, Silverman relates many of his high-profile battles with the Religious Right, including his decision to run for governor of South Carolina to challenge the state's constitutional provision that prohibited atheists from holding public office.

Candidate Without a Prayer offers an intimate portrait of a central player in today's increasingly heated culture wars. It will be sure to charm both believers and nonbelievers alike, and will lead all those who care about the separation of church and state to give thanks.

©2012 Herb Silverman and Richard Dawkins (foreword) (P)2012 Pitchstone Publishing

Quirky

I noticed that some other reviewers didn’t enjoy the author’s reading style so I felt compelled to write a quick review to say that I came to rather like it as the book progressed. I’m not from the US, and that may be why I often don’t connect with US narrators. To generalise rather broadly, I haven’t come across many who can convey a good range of accents and voices, and some narrators that rate highly with USans sound to me as though they’re auditioning for a super hyped up commercial. Cultural difference probably, and I could well change my mind as I consume more audiobooks. Professor Silverman’s reading style has the great virtues of being deliberate and clear, and I’m not at all sure it would have been better read by a professional. The book’s content is engaging and thought-provoking, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

Humanism vs religious intolerance

Any additional comments?

Almost never do I enjoy a narration of a book by the author. Guess I am spoiled by the stage-trained skills of people like Simon Jones and Wil Wheaton. Herb Silverman's reading of his book is not very great. But the content is funny, touching, and illuminating. I didn't know him before listening to this book but I learned a lot. This is an intellectual look at our politics and culture, mixed with the attempts of Silverman to bring a little light and education into the discussion of religious/political interactions. It is well worth listening to.

The coolest autobiography

Herb Silverman's account of his life is a delight to read or hear. He sheds light on the inequality of atheists of any class or profession. That he narrated the book himself was lovely.

Mr. Silverman had the audacity and bravery to go up against the Christian establishment. His tale is inspirational to atheists everywhere.

I adored his humorous tale very much and look forward to more books from him in the future.

Not what you expect

Unfortunately, Mr. Silverman does not have much of a story to tell. While sold as a narration of his run for public office, this is a rather mundane biography of a Jewish boy from Philadelphia teaching in Charleston. A nice story to be sure, but not anything worth the effort. His reading style is rather poor.

An Interesting Autobiography

Herb Silverman provides a good and reasonably-ordered autobiography for events along many branches of his life. Although not as earth shattering as I thought it might be, I did enjoy the book throughout. I do believe that the author could have chosen a better narrator, and that may have significantly improved the value of the book as entertainment.

Good story with horrible narration.

This audiobook is a painful listen. I must suggest a paper copy of this book.

Audio was not edited/produced. Read way too slow.

The audio was not properly produced. Multiple times, he reads part of a line, and then stops and reads it again. It as if he is actually reading a book, making mistakes and getting distracted, and no audio producers are editing that before it was uploaded. The story was fine. Some good stuff there. But the editing and reading were horrible. He read way too slowly. I listened on 1.5x speed and it was still odd at times. Not a smooth flowing narration. He's a good man, though and a great speaker/thinker for society. He just should have had a professional narrator do the book.

Boring, boring, boring!

I had big expectations for this book, with Richard Dawkins writing and reading the forword.
The book, which Herb Silverman claims his step-daughter couldn't stop laughing about, is probably one of the most boring books ever to have been published. I admit it does have a few pearls of atheistic wisdom, thank you Mr Silverman, but other than that most of the time its contents is as lacking in significance or wit as you can ask for. To make matters worse, Mr. Silverman cannot even correctly read his own autobiography. I am still at odds which is worse: his pronunciation or his intonation, but both are well under par.