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How the Roman Empire became Christian: Catherine Nixey’s ‘The Darkening Age’...
The First Council of Constantinople in AD 381, wall painting at the church of Stavropoleos, Bucharest, Romania. photo: Kostisl. public domain. The transformation of the Roman Empire from the classical...
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The Enlightenment paradox: review of ‘Dark Brilliance’ by Paul Strathern
The seventeenth century did not get off to a great start in Europe. Religious conflict still simmered, and in 1618, the continent became embroiled in the bloodiest and most destructive war it would...
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Russian history, Russian myths: review of ‘The Story of Russia’ by Orlando Figes
the christianization of kievan rus’: the baptism of rus’ by Klavdy Lebedev, c. 1900. Myth? Legend? Folklore? History? Fiction? This is The Story of Russia, as the title of Orlando Figes’s 2022 book...
View ArticleGimmick journalism and race in America: review of ‘Seven Shoulders’ by Sam...
‘Seven Shoulders is the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written.’ So declares the blurb of Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America, a (more or less)...
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‘The Genetic Book of the Dead’: A Dawkinsian Medley
In The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008), Richard Dawkins writes:Our ability to understand the universe and our position in it is one of the glories of the human species. Our ability to link...
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The radical atheism of the American revolutions: interview with Matthew Stewart
Scroll down for the video of the interview itself.One of the stereotypes of America is that it is a wasteland of gun violence, Bible-bashing, and hyper-capitalism—a vulgar place packed with reckless...
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‘Enthralling and useful’: Adrian Desmond’s ‘Reign of the Beast’, reviewed
Copyright: Open Book Publishers/Adrian Desmond. CC BY-NC 4.0.Adrian Desmond’s recent book Reign of the Beast: The Atheist World of W. D. Saull and his Museum of Evolution is surely far too long for...
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Wellspring of spot-on forecasts: a review of ‘H. G. Wells and the...
Although it covers a lot of ground, H. G. Wells and the Twenty-First Century by Bill Cooke reads like a brisk intellectual romp. Cooke achieves this by organising his material deftly into departments,...
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Year in review: 2024
Both the world at large and the Freethinker itself have been through some pretty big changes this past year. We’ll get to the world soon, but the Freethinker saw a change of editor in April when I took...
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Wrestling with fables: a review of ‘We Who Wrestle with God’ by Jordan Peterson
Like a latter-day Laocoön: Jordan Peterson wrestles with his deity. illustration by Nicholas E. Meyer.It sets out general premises that happen to be false—as will be shown. Then it develops specific...
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