The reviewer of Alain de Botton’s books runs a grave risk. For behold what happened to the New York Times critic Caleb Crain in 2009 when he suggested that AdB’s 2009 book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work ‘succeeds as entertainment, if not as analysis’. The philosopher replied: ‘I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill in every career move you make’. Not exactly Marcus Aurelius, is it?
So it was with trepidation that I closed AdB’s new book, Religion for Atheists, and began to write.
Religion for Atheists is AdB’s attempt to prove that not all non-believers have to be like Richard Dawkins. AdB, by contrast, is the sort of atheist you could take home to meet your father if he happened to be the Pope. A nice, respectable atheist.
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