This work purports to look at the negative effect of fundamentalist religion, and in fact, it does that, but not particularly well. The sections on theology and religious history are superficially researched, failing to include much of the relevant scholarship. Where the author discusses straight up information, such as numbers of incidents, he is clear and well researched; when the philosophical issues come in, he demonstrates shallow thinking, incomplete understanding, and poorly developed ideas. His discussion of science is also simplistic and in places is wrong, or at least misleading. He also starts out with the requisite disclaimer that this is not one of those atheist books that (fill in your favorite "not nice" thing to do here). In spite of that, the book sounds much like the other atheist books in tone, and besides, since almost all atheist books contain the same disclaimer, it would be helpful if they would give us a specific list of just who they are not like! There are a great many good books written on this topic; if I hadn't read so many of those, I might have included this in the grouping of good atheist books. If you're looking for a good solid discussion of the problems in religious history, you should look elsewhere. ( )