The Good Book: A Humanist Bible Paperback – March 5, 2013

The most important thing about this book is you don’t have to be a secularist to appreciate the wisdom within.This book contains exactly what it is titled, an immense amount of philosophical, historical and ethical prose, and writings from many of the greatest minds that have existed with humanity.Now don't get me wrong, you aren’t going to find every word within deeply inspiring or for that matter helpful, but this is not a book that should really be read cover to cover in one sitting, though it can be, but a book which should be read a little, flipped through and digested for in my opinion, probably many years to even a life time.This is a book that I keep on the edge of my desk, and find myself, when I am pondering on situations in my life, or perhaps lost in thought on some random path. I will pick the book up and flip to a "book" which I feel may help give a little bit of insight into this thought.Overall, this is a wonderful book, the only complaint I have is it would have been nice to have even just had endnotes or a little more direction as to whom was the writer of passages, but in the long run, with the advent of Google now-a-days, it’s easy to type in a phrase and pretty quickly find this.

I bought this book with no expectations. I had read an article about it, as an atheist I liked the idea and wanted to support Grayling's work so I bought it. I really was pleasantly surprised.This book is not a compilation of work. You will not open it up and find passages from various works called out by author. It is truly written in the style of the Bible - Grayling has taken the collected wisdom of hundreds of secular philosophers and melded it together in the flowery prose form typical of the Bible. There is no reference list at the back to tell you where anything came from, he has taken the ideas and the texts and melted them together.The Good Book begins with Genesis, where you can see the ideas of Darwin laid out in an inspirational way. Reading through this I was really pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. I'm used to this language being peppered with things I don't believe in, and listening to it at weddings or funerals generally gives me a lump in my stomach. Here was the same kind of lofty language, but saying the things I believed! I didn't realize how much I would enjoy hearing Darwin's theory of evolution told as a beautiful story of how we began and the cycle of life.As you make your way though the book, you can clearly see where he has incorporated Plato's dialogs, but without specific references. Characters are mentioned in the same way as the Bible, introduced without preamble, just snippets of conversation or story which attempt to showcase an idea. There are passages on grief and death as well.If you are looking to learn the works of these philosophers in an intellectual way, this is not the book for you. This book is meant to absorb the ideas they upheld in a more spiritual feeling way. I wish this book had been published before I got married, I would have looked for a passage from it to read at my wedding. I could see reading it at a funeral, there really is something cathartic about having grief and death and moving on with life written in this way.I feel in some ways as an Atheist this may have been what I was missing and didn't realize it. I didn't have anything to help me find a way to feel good about my place in nature's greater story, I just felt the absence of the belief in an afterlife. I also feel like this is a book I could read to my kids to help them figure out how to be a good person in a world which is not always good and in which you cannot rely on a all powerful being to save you from your problems. The language is flowery and poetic, but its also much more accessible than say Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. I minored in philosophy in college, I'm by no means an expert, but I have read some of these works and they are by no means easy to absorb.So, I think for what this book is trying to accomplish, what it says it is in the description, it is a great work.

Having reviewed parts of it, I enjoy the style of the book. It's not overly intellectual, yet it has an overall wise and realistic perspective on humanity and the world. The writing of the author is informed by fact, reason, and science, yet his ideas are presented in a way that lends itself to some interpretation, so that individual readers can attach personal meaning to them. The ideas promote a positive attitude toward oneself, other people, and life in general. They do not contain an argument against religion, yet there is a subtle opposition to mysticism and ignorance in the book, and it clearly presents an alternative. One weakness relative to many of the religious books of the Bible is that it does not contain stories. That makes it less accessible to audiences that do not reason abstractly by virtue of their age, verbal ability, or language skill. Another weakness can be found in the section with proverbs; some of them display a black-and-white thinking about phenomena that are actually on a spectrum of shades of gray; other proverbs show an unfair bias against certain ideologies (for example, materialism), a bias that is based entirely in the values of the author and not in any particular empirical reality, fact, or reason. Overall, I felt like I had gotten my money's worth, and I intend to find time to read the whole book carefully.

I was hoping for a recreation of the Shakespearean style bible written in 1610, but this one was good too. It's mostly in plain English, with out a lot of poetry and is missing a little mysticism. It "isn't something I would kill over", it's pretty straight forward philosophy though. It's a Great book, I would buy it again, but I hope that this book becomes progressively better over time with many rewrites and new material added to make it more of a spiritual enlightening projection of living a human life. It's missing some entertainment value is all. Lot's of information to form your own opinions in this this. It is professorial in many ways, but you have to buy it. It's the first edition of the Humanist Bible.I hope to see a 1000 more editions and rewrites on this book. (Biblical evolution; the way is should happen.)I am very proud of A.C. Grayling for writing this book, Thank you!

The 2016 Revised Version has thin pages and small text, meaning that I constantly had to squint when reading from it. Besides, the print quality is a bit poor, as if the publisher chose the "draft" setting on the printer for this.The content itself is quite lovely, but the print quality makes it hard to enjoy. I ended up buying both this new version and the original 2011 hardcover edition (from a third party seller). That one is just the right size and the text quality is great. The trouble is that 1) the hardcover version is no longer available as a new book, only second hand or from some third party sellers, and 2) it doesn't have the extra content that the 2016 Revised Version has.I really wish Prof. Grayling had taken more care about this book's publishing quality, especially since he's often said how this is the culmination of a few decades of work on his part. Maybe he'll release a "revised" hardcover version at some point.

This was a great opportunity to put together a Humanist source book with thoughtful and re-usable quotes, readings, and even parables/fables. Instead it is a (very long) collection framed as a psudeo bible.The bible was written in it's contemporary idiom, this could have been too.Great idea poor execution.

The book was ok but not what I expected. Less of a Bible more of a collection of poems and small other interesting classical stories. I'd like the Christian Bible you could not live your life guided by this book

Finding myself more and more dipping into books for a little bit of encouragement, positivity and life lessons and this book allows just that.A good secular reference book for those who need inspiring but don't want to look to religion for that.

This is a great book, wonderful full of beautiful words, but as the kindle edition does not have a contents page, a complete waste of time to buy in this format. I thought I was being clever and would be able to use this on a lecture tour wrong, without a way of finding your way round the book its a waste of time and money. I had to go out and track down a hard back copy so ended up paying twice and I can only really use the hardback copy shame!