How else to describe a book that telegraphs its prejudices with headings like "Infecting the world with neuroses," "The Jewish invention of holy war," "Jesus at Hiroshima" and "Muslim thirst for blood"?

Yet, he says, "God is still breathing." So today, the task of atheists is to "deconstruct" what's left of religion and reinvent modern society with reference only to reason and science.

He rounds up the usual suspects: the Crusades, the Inquisition, colonization, slavery. He spends much energy dissecting the Church's "love-marriage" with Hitler. (The infamous concordat, he stresses, reflects not réal politique but "a shared loathing of the same implacable enemies: Jews and Communists.")