As a skeptic, I'm on the fence whenever a work has Hitchens' name on it. While he's a great writer, I have problems with his often disingenuous or blatantly misconstrued understandings of the very "evil" religions he claims to be critiquing. At least, I can say that he's largely kept his mouth shut in this latest work, which is really a weighty collection of essays and excerpts that don't really offer much to the reader about atheism aside from arguments about god or religion. In essence, the book doesn't really teach about atheism so much as it does the flaws of other religions. For me, it's a disappointment. As a general survey of different popular arguments - some which are outdated but used as a reference point- it is successful. Otherwise, no.

A few personal highlights are found in Sagan, Shermer, Dennett, Hobbes, Ali, and Spinoza. Most of the others are arguments you've either heard before or personalized critiques which make for light if not entertaining reading. Ultimately, while readable, the book is far from portable and definitely not a solid treatise on atheism itself.