Books like Letter to a Christian Nation

01

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Sam Harris · Religion & Spirituality

The End of Faith was written in the weeks following the September 11 attacks and published in 2004.

Shares religion and ethics with Letter to a Christian Nation.

02

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins · Religion & Spirituality

The God Delusion is Richard Dawkins' comprehensive case against religious belief, published in 2006 as the most high-profile work of the New Atheist movement.

Shares religion and morality with Letter to a Christian Nation.

03

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens · Religion & Spirituality

God Is Not Great is Christopher Hitchens' comprehensive polemic against religion, published in 2007 as part of the wave of "New Atheist" books that included Dawkins' The God Delusion, Harris' The End of Faith, and Dennett's Breaking the Spell.

Shares religion and secularism with Letter to a Christian Nation.

04

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Sam Harris · Religion & Spirituality

Waking Up is Sam Harris' argument that the insights of contemplative traditions — particularly Buddhism's claim that the sense of self is an illusion — can be separated from religious metaphysics and investigated directly through meditation and introspection.

A kindred philosophy read.

05

The Blind Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Blind Watchmaker is Richard Dawkins's argument that natural selection — cumulative, non-random selection acting on random variation — is sufficient to explain the apparent design in biological organisms.

A kindred philosophy read.

06

The Moral Landscape

Sam Harris · Philosophy

The Moral Landscape is Sam Harris's argument that science can and should determine human values.

Shares secularism and ethics with Letter to a Christian Nation.

07

The Case for God

Karen Armstrong · Religion & Spirituality

The Case for God is Karen Armstrong's argument that the new atheism misunderstands what sophisticated religious believers in most traditions have actually claimed about God.

Shares religion and secularism with Letter to a Christian Nation.

08

Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche · Philosophy

Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche's assault on the philosophical tradition he had been trained in and had grown to distrust.

Both dig into morality.

09

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Breaking the Spell is Daniel Dennett's case that religion is a natural phenomenon — one that can and should be studied using the methods of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and anthropology.

Both dig into religion.

10

Fear and Trembling

Søren Kierkegaard · Philosophy

Fear and Trembling was published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, and it is Kierkegaard's most sustained meditation on the nature of faith through the lens of the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Both dig into ethics.

11

Lying

Sam Harris · Philosophy

Lying is a short philosophical essay — barely 80 pages — in which Sam Harris argues that lying is almost never justified and that most people dramatically underestimate its costs.

Both dig into ethics.

12

Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis · Philosophy

Mere Christianity began as a series of BBC radio broadcasts Lewis gave during World War II, and the book retains that quality of direct, informal address.

Both dig into ethics.