A fine, accurate but not stodgy critique of THE GOD DELUSION by Richard Dawkins. It is a very brief monograph (78 pp including after matter), as befits a long book so filled with a crude rhetoric that one can scarcely follow the argument, what there is of it. McGrath is courteous, explains issues carefully for those new to the New Atheist book-mill. His arguments are decidedly not designed to please evangelical-"fundamentalists." They preponderantly come from more liberal Christianities which can believe that there is no need to combat science, people from backgrounds in science itself who also do not believe that religion and science need to be on opposite sides of a war, some of them Christian scientists(note lower-case science), some of agnostic and atheist background themselves. McGrath can be delightful when he quotes Dawkins own published words contradicting themselves. But a word of warning, his suggested reading list is biassed to the Oxford U Press and the Cambridge U Press. As for myself, being prone to both of those universities, I suggest continuing on from McGrath to The Oxford Handbook of RELIGION AND SCIENCE, a well organized collection of essays from all sides, including Islamic thinking on the issues.

How, in your advance advertising could you miss the chance to tell your not-so-scholarly readers, that Herodotus is the world"s favorite ancient historian because, in addition to everything you have said, he is among the greatest storytellers in the history of western civilization. Which is why historians are very careful not to read him without a grain of salt, but for the general reader a translation is great. For the Greek student he is much simpler to read than his successors. In Herodotus you will also read the first extant account of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. Before you try Herodotus, though, if you learned your Greek in Attic dialect, you should probably try the even easier Anabasis of Xenophon, also known in English as The March Up Country, to familiarize yourself with basic Greek military terminology. He was the commander of about 10,000 Greek mercenaries betrayed and stranded in very much the Southern Middle East, who had to fight their way North to get home. He is also a great storyteller, also to be taken with a grain of salt.

For the Latin student at Shakespeare's level of "small Latin and less Greek" you should be forewarned that the historical examples of Latin usage across the centuries are not translated for you . You get a sentence with the Latin word in the Latin context. For those uncomfortable with dealing with that fact, this is not the lexicon for you. As far as price goes--given the limited nature of the readership, there is also the probability that LOGOS does not own the typography rights. Oxford university press still does and the typeface, clear on the page to the eye will give fits to standard e-book programs with a large variety of faces and significant size differences in the same line. What is being contemplated is an editing and proofreading nightmare: a positively quixotic ideal for the use of which Oxford charges a goodly monthly fee to anyone who wants to use the Legendary OED on line. Added to that the need for Logos compatibility with other resources as well as having to deal with the varying screen sizes of users and differing line-wraps and other problems? I am not a shill for LOGOS and they do not pay me anything. I know something about the process as a Project Gutenberg volunteer proofreader and I stand in awe of the task they undertake. Cheap at the prospective price.

I have just purchased his works at long last and after long searching for an affordable copy of The Laws of of Ecclesiastical Polity by Richard Hooker. My search lasted over 40 years, and was in no sense the quest of a specialist. I read an extended excerpt in the anthology of English prose required in 1968 at the University of Minnesota for a survey course to start toward a BA in English Lit. I fell in love with his prose purely as truly great prose. Let me tell you it is HARD to find Hooker at less than a small fortune and even on the web finding just that book complete is frustrating. The works of Thomas Browne are easily had in comparison. And NOW, to get the OUP complete works in a format which makes intuitive and convenient sense for dealing with footnotes and relationships across 3 volumes to understand the nature of theological disputes in Elizabethan times! Pardon me if I'm gushing like a sophomore over an enthusiasm. The fact is that that's exactly what I was when I first read that tantalizing ten gigantic double column pages in small print.