Further Reading
Dawkins, Richard,The God Delusion, Mariner Books,
2008.
The biologist Dawkins’s salvo against religious
belief gained widespread media coverage.
Dawkins pits religious beliefs about creation
against Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Potential readers should be warned that the
tone of the book is intolerant towards religious
tradition.
Garland, Robert,The Greek Way of Death, Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 2001.
This is an accessible guide to attitudes to, and
beliefs about, death in ancient Greece. It covers
the period from the time of Homer in the eighth
century to the fourth centuryB.C.
Moody, Raymond,Life After Life: The Investigation of a
Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death, HarperOne,
2001.
This classic book is an authoritative explora-
tion of near-death experiences. It includes sur-
veys and reports of people who had such
experiences, scientific research findings, and
Moody’s own insights. It has won praise for
its adherence to scientific method and its com-
patibility with many religious systems.
Plato,Symposium and the Death of Socrates, Words-
worth, 1998.
This edition groups together arguably the greatest
work of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato,
whose thought runs throughout Western culture
and finds expression in much Eastern philosophy.
It focuses on the sentencing of Plato’s teacher
Socrates for impiety and Socrates’s reflections on
deathbeforetakinghisownlife.Thebookcon-
tains the following dialogues by Plato:Sympo-
sium,Euthyphro, Socrates’sApology,Crito,and
Phaedo.
Roof, Wade Clark,Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers
and the Remaking of American Religion, Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2001.
This book is a compilation of surveys and per-
sonal interviews through which the author
traces the spiritual beliefs and practices of
baby boomers (people born in the post-World
War II period) in the United States. The book
shows the proliferation of multiple, complex
spiritualities (including feminist, Latino, and
ecological) that often overlap with established
religious traditions.The Dead