God Is Not Great

How Religion Poisons Everything

By: Christopher Hitchens

Narrated by: Christopher Hitchens

Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris' recent best-seller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty of the double helix.

©2007 Christopher Hitchens (P)2007 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"The best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos." (Publishers Weekly)
"Effortlessly witty and entertaining as well as utterly rational." (Booklist)

enlightening

This book has helped me put together a ton of puzzle pieces I was missing and understand a lot of concerns I had.

Extremely great read

I wish more die hard religious fanatics would take this type of logic to heart and maybe they can see how much damage religion does. The author is absolutely knifing the idea of religion and I love the aggressive tone he takes in his approach. He holds no punches but does admit that he is not perfect in his logic but with that being said, religion needs to follow suite and admit that their entire notion is built on top of thousands of years of mere story telling. Highly recommended!!!!

What's already known facts to a neat package

(As posted in GoodReads)
This book title is well known and roundly criticized by various religions, but I think the majority of the criticize is not actually read it. It does not say anything specifically AGAINST any religion other than that which is already known. But I can see Christians, Muslims, and religious Jews in particular having a lot of trouble with it, because he points out aspects that are already known but rationalized away.
I admit that as a Reform Jew I do my own rationalizing away to make my own belief system "acceptable and reasonable" in some sense, but there you are…
As I say, this book doesn't actually introduce any new knowledge, but it puts it all in one place, and it points out a lot of religious fallacies and inconsistencies. Fortunately, I knew, going in, what I was in for, and the kaleidoscope of facts – although disheartening – is not overly surprising.
As a skeptic and scientist, I find the thought of religion overall to be more than a little suspect, and Mr. Hitchens puts it all together. I admit that I am not comfortable calling myself an atheist, and I definitely do consider myself Jewish, but that doesn't mean that the God nonsense is reasonable.

A Must Listen

A poignant, well writen, plea for humanity to embrace reason and forgo mythology. Christopher Hitchens not only tackles incongruencies and hypocracies found in the three Abrahamic religions, but also others as he meticulously makes the case they are all human constructs.

rip great man

brilliant book, worth every second. amazing vocabulary .. read by the man himself you won't go wrong . get this now

Beautifully Constructed, read by the Author

A logical analysis of the ridiculousness and harmfulness of religion, and a hope for the future.

A real treat to be read to by the author.

The dynamics of this recording are suboptimal, however, so that the quiet parts are challenging to understand in the presence of road noise. Many parts are unintelligible without rewinding multiple times as a result of the speaking style and dynamics, combined with a lack of attention to detail in post-production.

Enlightening

Great information and very enlightening. I had a very difficult time understanding the English Narrator

Excellent Performance

Christopher Hitchens himself, narrates this book. So here, the enunciation, emphases and pacing are as he intended, and just overall a real treat.

That's all in addition to the intellectual and psychological self defences gained from reviewing reason's arguments against revelation. And we get to witness someone really versed in skeptical thinking. All in all, I found it refreshing.

Cam be difficult t listen to

l always liked Hitchens' work, and mournedhis death.; however I knew he could be islamophobic. If you're prepared for it, then those parts of this book won't be so jarring. otherwise, I enjoyed his work very much.

Hard to understand

I'm glad I read the book before listening to it. As such, it wasn't hard to let it go when the frustration of not being able to understand the narration grew to be too much to enjoy the material. It seemed as if it was a combination of mumbling, speaking too fast, and in monotone. Poor performance and direction. But awesome material. Read the book!