The popularity of the atheist position as reflected in some recent books may have people who follow bestseller lists scratching their heads in amazement—where, after all, are the brimstone screeds of O'Reilly and Coulter and novels about the coming Rapture? Although nonbelievers getting the upper hand isn't unprecedented in American culture, you have to go back 40 years to find a time when the country grappled with such a crisis of faith, an era marked by Time magazine's 1966 cover story “Is God Dead?”

Currently riding high is a trinity of startling successes—Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve), Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin) and Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf). These brainy, skeptical takes on God and religion have quickly ascended to the top of national bestseller lists.

Since its May 1 publication, God Is Not Great, which PW called “the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos,” has sold 58,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan (which accounts for approximately 70% of all book sales). Twelve publicity director Cary Goldstein said that within four days of the book's publication, the imprint had 95,000 copies in print. Hitchens has been reading to sellout crowds; an event at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in Manhattan drew more than 500 people. The God Delusion, which pubbed last September, has sold 282,000 copies, and Letter to a Christian Nation, another September '06 title, has sold 123,000 copies.

Interestingly, these books are leading PW's most recent hardcover religion bestseller list (published once a month), outranking such books as Joyce Meyer's The Power of Simple Prayer (FaithWords), which, according to BookScan, has sold 32,000 copies since its April 3 pub; John and Stasi Eldredge's Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul (Thomas Nelson), which has racked up 221,000 sold since April 2005; and Beth Moore's Get Out of That Pit: Straight Talk About God's Deliverance (Thomas Nelson), with 40,000 sold since January. And talk about the loss of rapture: perennial Christian bestseller Tim LaHaye's latest, Kingdom Come: The Final Victory(Left Behind #13), which Tyndale House published on April 3, has sold 46,000 copies to date, according to BookScan, a far cry from LaHaye's previous numbers. [BookScan does not collect data from Christian bookstores.]

Origin of the Species

Twelve publisher and editor-in-chief Jonathan Karp considers Hitchens's book, as well as those by Harris and Dawkins, to be direct rebukes to the status quo. “It's a manifestation of the anger that people are feeling toward piety in the culture, fears about Islamic extremism and frustration with the way religion is continuously injected into our political life,” he said. Vintage editor-in-chief Marty Asher, editor of Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation, said, “It's obvious there is a significant portion of Americans who are eager and relieved to be hearing these messages. It's a reaction to the dozens and dozens of these [Jerry] Falwell-type things.”

Viking publisher Paul Slovak edited Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett, which has sold 12,000 copies in paperback (pubbed in February) and 40,000 copies in hardcover (a February '06 release). Slovak considers Dennett's book less polemical than the Hitchens or Harris, because it approaches the debate from a scientific perspective. Yet, Slovak said, “Just when you think that there's been as many of these books as the audience could handle, another one comes along and it does even better. There were so many books coming from the other side of the spectrum that there was a need for these.”

The mainstream press has embraced these controversial books, perhaps as much for their contrarian slant as for the way they mirror the country's mood. Hitchens alone has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN's Lou Dobbs and Anderson Cooper, and Charlie Rose. His book was on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, and he was profiled in the New Yorker. Hitchens has also been participating in public debates to publicize the book; the first one, with the Rev. Al Sharpton, was hosted by the New York Public Library, blogged by the NYTimes.com, and written about by Salon.com and the Huffington Post.

For All Eternity?

Since publishing Harris's book, Vintage's Asher has received “a few dozen” proposals for both pro- and anti-religion books. “I've become the de facto religion person here,” he said with amusement, though he added, “It's hard to imagine there's a lot left to say.” Karp, of Twelve, thinks there will be more atheist book proposals shopped to publishers, but he said, “I'm not doing any more. I'm done. I think Christopher Hitchens has made the point. We're very happy to continue selling his book. But I don't intend to become the atheist press here.”

But Houghton Mifflin v-p and editor-in-chief Eamon Dolan, who edited the Richard Dawkins book, said he would consider publishing other anti-religion books. “If another great book came along tomorrow that I felt really advanced the issue, I'd snap it up. I don't think it's a fad; I don't think it's going away. [But] it might feel like a fad because these are relatively new questions for Americans to ask.”

One publisher that's banking on continued interest is Da Capo. It recently signed a deal with Hitchens for The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer. The book will include Hitchens's own selection of the most essential and influential writings for nonbelievers, including pieces from Darwin, Einstein, Twain, Russell, Jefferson, Paine and Marx, and is set for release this fall. The trend is influencing fiction, too: next month, Viking will publish the novel God Is Dead by Ron Currie Jr.

Prometheus Books, meanwhile, has been successfully publishing in the nonbelief category for more than 30 years. In fact, two of the three panelists on the BEA panel on atheism (mentioned below) are from the press: Victor Stenger and Nica Lalli. Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis, a January 2007 pub, became Prometheus's first-ever New York Times bestseller; the house has shipped more than 60,000 units. Publicity director Jill Maxick said Prometheus's atheist backlist titles have always done well—1979's Atheism: The Case Against God by George Smith is a perennial bestseller for them—but that they “have seen a jump in the activity within the last 12—18 months on many titles, some older, some more recent, like the new memoir Nothing: Something to Believe In by Nica Lalli.”

Despite Prometheus's success in publishing such books, Maxick attributes the recent boom to the current combination of “top tier media-friendly authors and big publisher support and resources.” She also said the country's political climate is probably ideal for these arguments to receive attention, citing “disillusion with the very religious Bush administration [and] unease over the state of the war.” On the downside (for Prometheus, at least), Maxick has noticed a media backlash. “It seems one atheism or nonbeliever story is often the limit for a media outlet,” she said.

Thou Shalt Respond Accordingly

Evangelical publishers have answered Dawkins and his cohorts with a cottage industry of anti-atheism books, and it's reasonable to expect that Hitchens will be receiving similar treatment soon. InterVarsity Press will publish Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion next month, and publicity manager Heather Mascarello said the book has drawn great interest from all media, including mainstream press. And Templeton Foundation Press, which specializes in science and religion issues, has just released a direct response to Dawkins called Cosmic Impressions: Traces of God in the Laws of Nature by Walter Thirring, a scientist who went to school with Dawkins.

Christian books are showing more of an interest in listening to the criticisms that atheists have lodged, too. One such book is I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith Through an Atheist's Eyes by Hemant Mehta (WaterBrook, April 17). And last month, Tyndale published Jim and Casper Go to Church by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper, which views Christianity from the standpoint of people who have rejected it.

Religion powerhouse Thomas Nelson is not planning any specific responses to the Dawkins or Hitchens books, but, said Matt Baugher, v-p and publisher of spiritual growth and Christian thought, “We have a number of very significant titles coming out in our winter list that deal with those books within their pages.” They include The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail: The Misguided Quest to Destroy Your Faith by Becky Garrison and Lost in Transmission: What We Can and Cannot Know About the Words of Jesus by Nicholas Perrin, which is a response to Bart Ehrman's bestselling Misquoting Jesus (Harper San Francisco).

As rebuttals to the rebuttals keep surfacing, people in the publishing industry are debating whether or not this “new” category is indeed separate from religion, and if it is, what it should be called. Dolan, of Houghton Mifflin, said, “I don't know what term they'd put over the 'rethinking spirituality' category, but I think the ideas behind these books have a lot of staying power.” And at last weekend's Book Expo America, a range of atheist authors—including Hitchens—convened for a panel (sponsored by PW) on “Atheism: The Rise of a New Subcategory in Religion” (see PW's Religion BookLine for a report on the panel). Whatever this new genre's name or placement in bookstores, one thing is certain: it's drawing readers. And for many in the publishing industry, that's plenty.