76 books like 2000 Years of Disbelief

By James A. Haugt,

Here are 76 books that 2000 Years of Disbelief fans have personally recommended if you like 2000 Years of Disbelief. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Truth about the Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World

Eric Maisel Author Of Choose Your Life Purposes

From my list on the truth about the truth.

Why am I passionate about this?

The sixty books I’ve written wander in and out of existential thought, as that breakthrough thinking, where man was told to take personal responsibility for his life and stop looking up or elsewhere for purpose and meaning, has informed everything I do and write about. Over the years, I’ve been a family therapist, a creativity coach, an existential wellness coach, and an advocate for critical psychology and critical psychiatry, points of view that dispute the current pseudo-medical “mental disorder” paradigm. 

Eric's book list on the truth about the truth

Eric Maisel Why did Eric love this book?

Apart from the existential fiction that I love (Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, etc.), this is one of my favorite books of all time. The editor, Walter Truett Anderson, gathered together the best collection ever of essays on the topics of postmodernism, deconstruction (and reconstruction), the wobbly nature of truth in the twentieth century (and now, the twenty-first century), and how we might go about reconstructing the truth now that we have so beautifully and mercilessly deconstructed it.

Authors included are Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Richard Rorty, Bell Hooks, and a ton of other great thinkers on the subject of our postmodern malaise and the difficulties of belief … in anything. If you don’t know this book, you will really, really want to get to know it.

By Walt Anderson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Truth about the Truth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Includes essays and excerpts from the works of prominent modern thinkers such as Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, and Isaiah Berlin among others.


Book cover of The Word From Paris: Essays on Modern French Thinkers and Writers

Eric Maisel Author Of Choose Your Life Purposes

From my list on the truth about the truth.

Why am I passionate about this?

The sixty books I’ve written wander in and out of existential thought, as that breakthrough thinking, where man was told to take personal responsibility for his life and stop looking up or elsewhere for purpose and meaning, has informed everything I do and write about. Over the years, I’ve been a family therapist, a creativity coach, an existential wellness coach, and an advocate for critical psychology and critical psychiatry, points of view that dispute the current pseudo-medical “mental disorder” paradigm. 

Eric's book list on the truth about the truth

Eric Maisel Why did Eric love this book?

When I was growing up, Paris was the world center for thinkers on existentialism and postmodernism, my two favorite subjects. I knew the names of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir better than the names of my classmates.

John Sturrock has written the best essays ever on the thinkers of that pivotal period in intellectual thought, among them, in addition to Camus and Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan. If you want a smart, eloquent, and accessible introduction to the postmodern thought revolution about the truth—how “true” lost its meaning and how it might mean something again—this is your book!  

By John Sturrock,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Word From Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

French writing and French thought have always been held in a certain glamorous esteem. For young, radical philosophers of the 1960s searching out intellectual enlightenment in Left Bank cafes and bookshops, for serious-minded semiologists wishing to deconstruct everything around them, and for fans of the formal novel, France has remained a source of stimulation and fresh ideas.
John Sturrock has written for many years about French literature and thought, and here presents a wonderfully accessible guide to the major figures of the last fifty years. Reviewing the various movements that have dominated the French intellectual scene-existentialism, the nouveua roman, structuralism,…


Book cover of Essays in Freethinking

Eric Maisel Author Of Choose Your Life Purposes

From my list on the truth about the truth.

Why am I passionate about this?

The sixty books I’ve written wander in and out of existential thought, as that breakthrough thinking, where man was told to take personal responsibility for his life and stop looking up or elsewhere for purpose and meaning, has informed everything I do and write about. Over the years, I’ve been a family therapist, a creativity coach, an existential wellness coach, and an advocate for critical psychology and critical psychiatry, points of view that dispute the current pseudo-medical “mental disorder” paradigm. 

Eric's book list on the truth about the truth

Eric Maisel Why did Eric love this book?

One of the top freethinkers of the early 1900s, Chapman Cohen, is all but lost in the mists of history and obscurity. But he is one of my favorite sharp-eyed debunkers of humbug, without which debunking the truth stands no chance.

Cohen wrote on a wide variety of subjects, from how tyrants target scientists to the contemporary witch trials of his times to the connection between religious zealotry and a preoccupation with other people’s sexual practices to the differences between English and French atheism.

If you’ve read smart essays by the likes of Bertrand Russell and George Orwell, you will enjoy the essays of Chapman Cohen, a thinker you likely have never heard of—but might love to get to know.

By Chapman Cohen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Essays in Freethinking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Book by Chapman Cohen


Book cover of Tales of the Dervishes

Eric Maisel Author Of Choose Your Life Purposes

From my list on the truth about the truth.

Why am I passionate about this?

The sixty books I’ve written wander in and out of existential thought, as that breakthrough thinking, where man was told to take personal responsibility for his life and stop looking up or elsewhere for purpose and meaning, has informed everything I do and write about. Over the years, I’ve been a family therapist, a creativity coach, an existential wellness coach, and an advocate for critical psychology and critical psychiatry, points of view that dispute the current pseudo-medical “mental disorder” paradigm. 

Eric's book list on the truth about the truth

Eric Maisel Why did Eric love this book?

Sufiism predates Islam and contains some of the most interesting thinking from the ancient world to stand alongside the ancient Greeks and Romans. All three traditions, the Greek, the Roman, and the Sufi, did a tremendous job of deconstructing humbug and turning a clear eye on the truth.

Teaching tales from the Sufi tradition have been passed down to us, but we no longer know where they came from—for instance, did you know that the famous tale of the blind men and the elephant is a Sufi teaching tale? Idries Shah has gathered together a wonderful collection of these teaching tales with names like The Man Who Was Aware of Death, The Man with the Inexplicable Life, and Wisdom for Sale. If you married the teaching tale, the fairy tale, and existential thought, this is what you would get. I love these tales! 

By Idries Shah,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tales of the Dervishes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dervish tales are more than fable, legend, or folklore. For centuries dervish masters have instructed their disciples by means of these teaching stories, which are said to increase perception and knowledge and provide a better understanding of man and the world. In wit, construction, and piquancy, they compare with the finest tales of any culture. Idries Shah spent many years traveling through three continents to collect and compare oral versions of these remarkable stories. This anthology, presented in the dervish manner, contains stories drawn from the repertories of dervish masters over a period of more than a thousand years.


Book cover of Sagittarius Rising

Marc Wortman Author Of Millionaires' Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power

From my list on World War One from unique perspectives.

Why am I passionate about this?

My books and articles of narrative history written for general audiences explore how American society has gone to war and the fraught yet essential relationship between military and civilian life. I use the techniques developed in my work as a journalist to bring to life individuals and tell true, deeply researched stories with vivid characters and the page-turning propulsion of a thriller.

Marc's book list on World War One from unique perspectives

Marc Wortman Why did Marc love this book?

Pilots in World War One were a breed apart. They had embarked on the creation of an entirely new dimension of warfare and, in many aspects, leaped off the earth like gods while the Tommies, poilus and doughboys battled in the trenches and mud below. But these warriors were doing so in the most harrowing conditions, in flimsy wood and canvas biplanes, risking hypoxia and hypothermia, anti-aircraft fire, and deadly dogfights, and, on the Allies’ side, being shot down without parachutes. Little wonder that fighter pilots lived on average for less than three weeks at the front. Cecil Lewis describes the exultation and the brutality of this war in sharply etched, often lyrical prose. The extraordinary thing is how he loved the air war: “To be alone, to have your life in your own hands, to use your own skill, single-handed, against the enemy. It was like the lists of…

By Cecil Lewis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sagittarius Rising as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'This is a book everyone should read. It is the autobiography of an ace, and no common ace either. The boy had all the noble tastes and qualities, love of beauty, soaring imagination, a brilliant endowment of good looks ...this prince of pilots ...had a charmed life in every sense of the word' - George Bernard ShawSent to France with the Royal Flying Corps at just seventeen, and later a member of the famous 56 Squadron, Cecil Lewis was an illustrious and passionate fighter pilot of the First World War, described by Bernard Shaw in 1935 as 'a thinker, a…


Book cover of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady

Elyce Helford Author Of What Price Hollywood?: Gender and Sex in the Films of George Cukor

From my list on classic Hollywood from a scholar and fan of film.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a film fan and scholar who has a joyful yet complex relationship with Hollywood. I have basked in the classics of Hollywood’s Golden Age (1930s-1950s) from my teen years on, including the musical delights of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the screwball comedies of Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, the magnificent Universal monsters, and the deliciously dark creativity of film noir. Reading about the history of Hollywood has helped me enjoy this pastime even more, learning everything from economics and politics to method and form. The more I know, the richer grows my interest in both the past and present of that unique institution we call Hollywood.

Elyce's book list on classic Hollywood from a scholar and fan of film

Elyce Helford Why did Elyce love this book?

I once played Henry Higgins' mother in a local theatrical production of My Fair Lady. I delighted in the music and in portraying (in a white wig and wrinkled make-up) the stern, wise Mrs. Higgins, even as I also wondered whether Higgins and Pickering were perhaps secretly a couple and if Eliza was asexual.

This made me want to read the play on which My Fair Lady is based, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I did not get answers to my somewhat whimsical questions about sexuality, but I did see in even greater relief the turning of women into objects that ambitious, selfish men may do.

By George Bernard Shaw, Alan Jay Lerner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pygmalion and My Fair Lady as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This Greek legend is presented in two different formats--the original by Shaw and the musical play by Lerner.


Book cover of The Trio

Freddie Gillies Author Of Because All Fades

From my list on love and friendship set in Europe.

Why am I passionate about this?

The best fiction explores complex relationships between friends and lovers. I’ve been fascinated by this for as long as I can remember because love and friendship are the cornerstones of human existence. As concepts, they give life meaning yet can also take it away. They bring us together but can also leave us estranged. The sun-soaked cities of Europe have for so long been playgrounds for young lovers and friends, enjoying both the best of life and the most melancholy. I love traveling Europe–the grandeur, the romance, the happy-sad sentiment of it all. It embodies the topic and makes for the most beautiful setting.

Freddie's book list on love and friendship set in Europe

Freddie Gillies Why did Freddie love this book?

The Trio captures the essence of friendship and love and the coexisting yet diametrically opposed social anxieties that can accompany them. This is why I love this book–love is presented as complex, challenging, and fraught with more that is unsaid than actually expressed.

I also love this book because it expresses love as a real feeling, something that is experienced but not always easy to explain (or get along with). The characters are relatable, honest, and flawed, yet likable. The book is also set in beautiful locations–Stockholm, Paris, London–which makes it beautiful to read.

By Johanna Hedman, Kira Josefsson (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Trio as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BERNARD SHAW PRIZE 2023

Elegant, mature and richly atmospheric, a bittersweet love story glimpsed through the veil of memory

'The love child of Normal People and Brideshead Revisited... Sublime and elegiac' Francesca Reece

'[A] heady mix of hope and nostalgia, of desire and regret, of new love and lost love' Sunday Times

Thora, August and Hugo come from different worlds. One is an art school dreamer, one a wealthy scion of the old-world elite, and one an ordinary boy from out of town. But over the course of two sky-blue summers in Stockholm, they are drawn together…


Book cover of Charles James: Portrait of an Unreasonable Man: Fame, Fashion, Art

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell Author Of The Way We Wed: A Global History of Wedding Fashion

From my list on biographies of fashion designers.

Why am I passionate about this?

Fashion historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is the author of Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, Worn on This Day: The Clothes That Made History, and The Way We Wed: A Global History of Wedding Fashion. She is working on a biography of designer Chester Weinberg.

Kimberly's book list on biographies of fashion designers

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell Why did Kimberly love this book?

Like any art form, fashion has its share of tortured geniuses. Perhaps none combined genius and torture with as much panache as Charles James, who dressed celebrities and socialites only to die in poverty. Vogue editor Bettina Ballard remembered that “he was constantly cutting and perfecting” his toiles, “which he turned, very occasionally, into actual dresses.” A personality as complex and demanding as his sculptural evening gowns, James knew everybody and got along with nobody—and you’ll understand why after reading Klein’s biography, which draws on recently discovered, unfiltered tapes James made for a planned autobiography that, like so many of his creations, he never he finished.

By Michele Gerber Klein,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Charles James as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Christian Dior described him as the inspiration for the New Look. Salvador Dali called his work soft sculpture, and Virginia Woolf exclaimed, He is a genius. As George Bernard Shaw tells us, only unreasonable men change the world. This portrait of the life and times of Charles James winner of two Coty awards, and the subject of a 2014 Metropolitan Museum of Art show draws on the glamour of Europe in the 1930s, and the dazzle of New York City from the 40s through the 70s as it travels with James from his birth to privilege in England in 1906…


Book cover of John Bull's Other Island

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an Irish historian and biographer living in London and have always been fascinated by the confused attitudes that bedevil the relationship between Ireland and England. Educated in Ireland and the USA, I came to teach at the University of London in 1974, a period when IRA bombings had penetrated the British mainland. In 1991, I moved to Oxford and taught there for twenty-five years. As I constantly move between the two countries and watch my children growing up with English accents but Irish identities, I remain as fascinated as ever by the tensions, parallels, memories, and misunderstandings (often well-meaning) that prevail on both sides of the narrow Irish Sea.

Roy's book list on illuminating books about the turbulent relationship between Ireland and England

Roy Foster Why did Roy love this book?

This is a play that reads like the most hilarious novel, and the "Preface for Politicians" should be required reading for British diplomats and civil servants.

Shaw deals with the misunderstandings that arise when a rich Englishman arrives in Edwardian Ireland to develop a tourist opportunity. His approach is at once idealistic and exploitative, while his Irish colleagues are cynical, hardheaded, and privately contemptuous.

In the accompanying "Preface," Shaw uses the misunderstandings that arise from self-interest and wilful ignorance to illuminate and expose Britain’s misgovernment of Ireland. His perspective is socialist rather than nationalist, but few saw as far ahead as he did in 1904, and his devastating humour still takes your breath away.

By Bernard Shaw,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked John Bull's Other Island as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

John Bull's Other Island is a comedy about Ireland, written by George Bernard Shaw in 1904. Shaw himself was born in Dublin, yet this is one of only two plays of his where he thematically returned to his homeland, the other being O'Flaherty V.C. The play was highly successful in its day, but is rarely revived, probably because so much of the dialogue is specific to the politics of the day.


The play deals with Larry Doyle, originally from Ireland, but who has adopted English cultural customs and manners to fit in in England and Tom Broadbent, his English business…


Book cover of Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time

J. Anthony Allen Author Of Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers: The producer's guide to harmony, chord progressions, and song structure in the MIDI grid.

From my list on falling in love with music all over again.

Why am I passionate about this?

When you get a PhD in music, you end up with a lot of music books. Like, hundreds of them. At the end of every semester I could never bring myself to sell my textbooks because I just love books. Over the years I’ve continued to collect books about music, and books about everything. I’m happy that now a few have my name on the spine. 

J.'s book list on falling in love with music all over again

J. Anthony Allen Why did J. love this book?

This book is essentially a book of quotes from famous musicians, composers, and conductors. I find this book especially inspiring because of the trivial nature of some of the quotes. Sometimes it is just refreshing to read Beethoven complaining about his taxes, or Mozart trying to get paid after a gig. I use this book in my university classes constantly.

By Nicolas Slonimsky,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lexicon of Musical Invective as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A snakeful of critical venom aimed at the composers and the classics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Who wrote advanced cat music? What commonplace theme is very much like Yankee Doodle? Which composer is a scoundrel and a giftless bastard? What opera would His Satanic Majesty turn out? Whose name suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka? And finally, what third movement begins with a dog howling at midnight, then imitates the regurgitations of the less-refined or lower-middle-class type of water-closet cistern, and ends with the cello reproducing the screech of an ungreased wheelbarrow? For the answers to these and other…


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