Books by A.C. Grayling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are eagerly anticipating Professor Grayling's new work titled: The Good Book: A Humanist Bible scheduled to be released in May according to the publisher, WALKER & COMPANY.

 

The Good Book 

A Humanist Bible 

A. C. Grayling 

Publisher notes:

Published on the four hundredth anniversary of the King James Bible, a book of extraordinary audacity from a remarkable thinker—a secular humanist Bible drawn from the wisdom and inspiration in the world's great literature.

Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, and the literary skill to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A. C. Grayling has done, creating a nonreligious Bible drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions.

The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in the beauty of its language and its arrangement into short chapters and verses, offering to the nonreligious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of various secular humanist traditions. Organized in twelve main sections—Genesis, Histories, Wisdom, The Sages, Parables, Consolations, Lamentations, Proverbs, Songs, Epistles, Acts, and The Good Book opens with meditations on the origin and progress of the world and human life in it, then devotes attention to the question of how life should be lived, how we relate to one another, and how vicissitudes are to be faced and joys appreciated. Inspired by the work of Herodotus and Lucretius, Confucius and Mencius, Seneca and Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, and so many others, The Good Book is a publishing event and a literary tour de force.

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Co-opting the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible as well as the term 'bible," is an inspired move on the part of Professor Grayling.

The Good Book will not only provide the details of a superior moral and ethical code for life, but will be in the format so familiar to millions of religious adherents.  That stylistic decision will make the reading not only familiar to those of faith, but comforting as well.

Strategically brilliant.  RHM

 

Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that Shape the 21st Century

Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age

Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life

An Introduction to Philosophical Logic

Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life without God

A. C. Grayling is professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of the acclaimed Among the Dead Cities, Descartes, Toward the Light of Liberty, Meditations for the Humanist, and Thinking of Answers. A fellow of the World Economic Forum and past chairman of the human rights organization June Fourth, he contributes frequently to the Times (London), Financial Times, Economist, New Statesman, and Prospect. Grayling's play Grace, co-written with Mick Gordon, was acclaimed in London and New York. He lives in London.