Recommended Atheist Books

The following is a small sampling of recommended books for an atheist library that may become difficult to acquire under a religiously authoritarian government:

Atheism

Carrier, Richard, Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2005.

Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, New York: Mariner Books, 2006.

Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Dennett, Daniel, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, New York: Penguin Books, 2006.

Harris, Sam, Letter to a Christian Nation, New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

Harris, Sam, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Hitchens, Christopher, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, New York: Twelve, 2007.

Hitchens, Christopher, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2007.

Russell, Bertrand, Why I Am Not a Christian, London: Routledge, 1957.

Smith, George H., Atheism: The Case Against God, Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1979.

Religion

Ali, Abdullah Yusuf, The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary, Brentwood: Amana Corporation, 1934.

Confucius, The Analects, Translated by D. C. Lau, London: Penguin Classics, 1997.

Confucius, The Doctrine of the Mean, Translated by A. C. Muller, Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2003.

Confucius, The Great Learning, Translated by James Legge, North Charleston: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.

Easwaran, Eknath, trans. The Bhagavad Gita, Tomales: Nilgiri Press, 2007.

King James Version, The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments, London: Robert Barker, 1611.

Dystopia

Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.

Atwood, Margaret, The Testaments, New York: Doubleday, 2019.

Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451, New York: Ballantine Books, 1953.

Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games, New York: Scholastic Press, 2008.

Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World, London: Chatto & Windus, 1932.

Orwell, George, 1984, London: Secker & Warburg, 1949.

Subversive Literature

Alderman, Naomi, The Power, London: Viking, 2016.

Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York: The New Press, 2010.

Awad, Mona, Bunny, New York: Viking, 2019.

Ballard, J. G., Crash, London: Jonathan Cape, 1973.

Banks, Iain, The Wasp Factory, London: Macmillan, 1984.

Bataille, Georges, Story of the Eye, Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1928.

Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and Margarita, Moscow: YMCA Press, 1967.

Ellis, Bret Easton, American Psycho, New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

Frost, Mark, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, New York: Flatiron Books, 2016.

Frost, Mark, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, New York: Flatiron Books, 2017.

Hendrix, Grady, We Sold Our Souls, Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2018.

Herman, Edward S., and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

Hoban, Russell, Riddley Walker, London: Jonathan Cape, 1980.

Jemisin, N.K., The Fifth Season, New York: Orbit, 2015.

Kadare, Ismail, The Palace of Dreams, Tirana: Naim Frashëri Publishing House, 1981.

Kingsolver, Barbara, The Lacuna, New York: Harper, 2009.

Lanagan, Margo, Red Spikes, Australia: Allen & Unwin (Little Ark Books), 1991.

Lawrence, D. H., Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Florence: Tipografia Giuntina, 1928.

Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1960.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, One Hundred Years of Solitude, New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

McEwan, Ian, The Cement Garden, London: Jonathan Cape, 1978.

Morrison, Toni, Beloved, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

Moshfegh, Ottessa, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, New York: Penguin Press, 2018.

Murakami, Ryū, Piercing, Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994.

Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita, Paris: Olympia Press, 1955.

Nutting, Alissa, Tampa, New York: Ecco, 2013.

Orwell, George, Animal Farm, London: Secker & Warburg, 1945.

Palahniuk, Chuck, Damned, New York: Doubleday, 2011.

Palahniuk, Chuck, Fight Club, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Salinger, J.D., The Catcher in the Rye, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.

Thomas, Angie, The Hate U Give, New York: Balzer + Bray, 2017.

Thompson, Hunter S., Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, New York: Random House, 1971.

Vonnegut, Kurt, Breakfast of Champions, New York: Delacorte Press, 1973.

Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse-Five, New York: Delacorte Press, 1969.

Walker, Alice, The Color Purple, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

History

Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951.

Brown, Dee, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Frank, Anne, The Diary of Anne Frank, New York: Doubleday, 1947.

Shirer, William L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960.

Law

Holt, J.C., ed., Magna Carta, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Constitution of the United States, Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1787.

Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, New York: J. and A. McLean, 1787-1788.

Politics & Political Fiction

Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York: The New Press, 2010.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Translated by Samuel Moore. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.

Sinclair, Upton, The Jungle, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1906.

Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States, New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

Most Banned:

Kobabe, M., Gender Queer: A Memoir, St. Louis: Lion Forge, 2020.

Johnson, G. M., All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2020.

Morrison, T., The Bluest Eye, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Curato, M., Flamer, New York: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 2020.

Green, J., Looking for Alaska, New York: Dutton Books, 2005.

Chbosky, S., The Perks of Being a Wallflower, New York: MTV Books, 1999.

Evison, J., Lawn Boy, Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2018.

Alexie, S., The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.

Perez, A. H., Out of Darkness, Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Lab, 2015.

Maas, S. J., A Court of Mist and Fury, New York: Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books, 2016.

Hopkins, E., Crank, New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2004.

Andrews, J., Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, New York: Amulet Books, 2012.

Dawson, J., This Book Is Gay, London: Hot Key Books, 2014.