One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious extremism. The need to understand it has never been greater, and Karen Armstrong attempts to do so in this text.

Brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty insist they were commanded to kill by God.

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

The Christian Right disseminate their ideas on the alternative broadcast networks and through their own publishers and schools. With a step-by-step breakdown of how they started and where they are, the author conducts an on-the-ground reporting and produces a work of cultural and political anthropology, and a no-holds-barred polemic.

Drawing on recent scholarship and personal studies, an Episcopal bishop argues against interpretation of the Bible as literal truth and explains how to make it vital and relevant to twentieth-century life.

Taking the reader on a journey through a country in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism, this title demonstrates how the growing influence of dominionism - the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule non-believers - is threatening the foundations of democracy.

In the wake of September 11, Changez, a Pakistani man in Manhattan, finds his position in the city he loves suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love.

Delivers an analysis of the clash of faith and reason. This book offers a historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favour of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behaviour and sometimes heinous crimes.

This is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.

Tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. This title paints a portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life.

Presenting a rebuttal of religious fundamentalism and blind belief, the author demolishes the myths on which Christianity was built, challenges believers to open their eyes to the contradictions of their faith and warns us of the dangers of America's ever increasing unification of Church and State.

All Julia Scheeres ever wanted was to have a normal, happy family. But, when her fanatical mother decides they should all move to rural Indiana, Julia's life begins to unravel. In the blistering heat of the isolating community, Julia and her adopted brother David struggle together through adolescence.

An exploration of the overwhelming complexity of Afghan politics, this title explains how it came in to being, how it is sustained and how Osama bin Laden has risen to such a figure of absolute power.

In this wide-ranging book Ali challenges assumptions on both sides, arguing that Islamic civilization has an important role in Western modernity, and that what we have experienced with the rise of fundamentalism is the return of history in an horrific form.

Written by the author who, raised in a secular family but interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, decides to dive in head first and attempt to obey the hundreds of less-publicized rules. This book describes how the resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal.

The inspirational tale of eight women who defied the confines of life in revolutionary Iran through the joy and power of literature.

Demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. This book argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without 'him'.

Persepolis ended in a cliffhanger in 1984, just as 14 year old Marjane was leaving behind her home in Tehran, escaping fundamentalism and the war in Iraq to begin a new life in the West. Here we follow her through the next eight years of her life - four years in Vienna, and four years back in Iran.

Presenting different arguments for religion, this book demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. It aims to show how religion fuels war, foments bigotry and abuses children.