BOOK REVIEW: “A Prophet of Peace” and Juan Cole’s New Historicism

I sometimes attend the Seattle Atheist Church on Sundays, and despite the many virtues that group has an organization and positive argument it makes by example for secular humanism, the fact that the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism movement were four white Anglo-American men reflects accurately the biases you’ll find in the atheism movement in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Anglosphere more generally.

Seattle’s atheist community is better than many other spaces I’ve seen, particularly in regards to gender and sexuality, but one element it continues to deal with is anti-Muslim racism.

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BOOK REVIEW: Saadia Zahidi’s “Fifty Million Rising” delivers even more than promised

Fifty Million Rising by Saadia Zahidi is that rare book that does everything it sets out to do then goes beyond it.

Zahidi’s look at the cohort of “The Generation of Working Women Transforming the Muslim World” (239 pages / Hatchette) doesn’t contradict itself, but golly is it large and containing multitudes. It couldn’t be anything less and still true, spanning as it does 30 Muslim-majority countries from North Africa all the way to Southeast Asia.

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BOOK REVIEW: David Neiwert’s latest book “Alt-America” feels like chemotherapy

In their first post-2016 general election show, Saturday Night Live had a skit with Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock reacting to the results throughout that night, not with pleasure but certainly without the shock or horror of the other urban-dwelling liberals.

David Neiwert’s book Alt-America is as convincing an argument you’ll find anywhere for why no one had an excuse to be surprised by Donald Trump’s campaign, its competitiveness, or its ultimate success.

Neiwert traces the historical strains of xenophobia, white supremacy, misogyny, and petty resentments that culminated in the “alt-right”, chronicling how they were able to come together to win the Republican nomination and get enough votes in right places to win the presidency.

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For all those who doubt, God is real — and Spanish

The other day, I heard a pastor preach about how uniquely divinely blessed America was, and I wondered if he was right.

As I see it, no group of people has been more fortunate than the Spanish.

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