religion, atheism, philosophy ( )

I have heard a lot of really excellent things about the Very Short Introduction series, and I happened across this one at my university's library.

Humanism is a topic with which I only had the very faintest familiarity, so I'm pretty sure it was a good topic with which I could start. Essentially, I knew that humanism is sometimes used as a synonym for atheism. Essentially, I was right; it didn't take very long to describe the meaning of humanism, so the majority of the book was taken up with the history of non-believers and, moreso, why humanism makes more sense than religiosity.

The author fought to keep a tone of superiority from overtaking the text, with varying levels of success. Even as an atheist, I found myself occasionally wondering why he found it necessary to point out how terrible religion is in order to prove the validity of humanism.

The book was comprehensive, for sure. It served its purpose in helping me learn the lay of the humanist land, and the further reading list (which I hope was not specific to this volume) wound be helpful to anyone wanting to delve deeper into the topic. ( )