Who's Who in Hell by Warren Allen Smith
Who's Who in Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalists, Rationalists, and Non-Theists is a one-volume, 1,260-page tome that costs $125. and can be obtained from Barricade Books, 185 Bridge Plaza North (Suite 308-A), Fort Lee, NJ 07024 (201) 944-7600
However, humanists and freethinkers can buy the book at a discounted price of $99. fromRationalists NY, 31 Jane St. (Box 10-D), New York, NY 10014
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6 April 1999
BARRICADE BOOKS
announced today that its fall titles will include books by former New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch and secular humanist Warren Allen Smith.
The title Mayor Koch picked for his 120-page book, Giuliani, Nasty Man, refers to his distaste for the current mayor's rule. "'Nasty' means that it says," remarked the former mayor. Giuliani tries "to disembowel people. That's what he tries to do. But I see this really as almost a Greek tragedy. His nastiness is causing him self-destruction." Publisher Lyle Stuart said the book is timed to have an impact on a potential candidacy by the Mayor in a United States Senate race." I think he's a nasty man, too."
Warren Allen Smith is a roué and sybarite who lives in New York City's Greenwich Village. A retired teacher and recording studio entrepreneur, he has written widely as a book reviewer, a columnist, and a skeptic. The title of his book, Who's Who in Hell, refers to his attempt to counter centuries of successful preaching about how terrible unbelievers are. In its 1,500 pages Smith has an encyclopedic A to Z listing of several thousand individuals who have been agnostics, atheists, deists, humanists, non-theists, rationalists, secularists, or other types of unbelievers. The term theologians invented, "Hell," is ridiculed. Instead, and in keeping with Mark Twain's view, it's now Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. The 2-volume set is the first such of its kind since Pierre Sylvain Maréchal's Dictionnaire des athées (1798). Publisher Lyle Stuart and his wife, Carole, are both listed as non-believers.
Barricade is the gadfly company that has produced books ranging from celebrity biographies (My Father, Uncle Miltie; My Life with Groucho, by Arthur Marx; Hi-Ho Steverino! by Steve Allen; I'm Still Here, by Eartha Kitt; Hollywood Gays, by Boze Hadleigh) to controversial titles like the bomb manual Anarchist Cookbook, the right-wing fantasy novel Turner Diaries, and the autobiography of Norman Mailer's divorced wife.
¶ is an encyclopedic A to Z listing of several thousand individuals who have been agnostics, atheists, deists, humanists, non-theists, rationalists, secularists, or unbelievers. The term theologians invented, Hell, is ridiculed. Instead, and in keeping with Mark Twain's view, it's now Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. The 2-volume set is the first such of its kind since Pierre Sylvain Maréchal's Dictionnaire des athées (1798).
¶ To help counter centuries of successful preaching about how terrible unbelievers are, the present work, subtitled Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Rationalists, and Non-Theists, makes a case not only for their respectability but also for their more positive and creative outlooks. The listing includes individuals
--from ancient times (e.g., Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Protagoras)
--through Renaissance Humanism (e.g., Erasmus)
--through the French Enlightenment (e.g., Diderot, Voltaire)
--and up to the present (e.g., Ayer, Dewey, Flew, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Rorty)
--including eminent individuals whose freethinking usually has gone unnoticed
(e.g.; cartoonists; novelists; poets; dramatists; sculptors; historians; rock stars; movie stars; musicians; journalists; the several Unitarian presidents; over 50 Nobel Prize winners; several dozen individuals pictured on postage stamps; etc.)
--and including celebrity agnostics and non-believers (e.g., Woody Allen; Ingmar Bergman; Pierre Boulez; Marlon Brando; Warren Buffett, Noam Chomsky; Sir Arthur C. Clarke; Michael Crichton; Francis Crick; Richard Dawkins; Paul Edwards; Albert Ellis; Harlan Ellison; Harvey Fierstein; Larry Flynt; Jodie Foster; Bill Gates; Sir John Gielgud; Katharine Hepburn; Jillette and Teller; Neil Kinnock; Paul Krassner; Stanley Kubrick; Ring Lardner Jr.; Richard Leakey; Tom Lehrer; Sir Ian McKellen; Marvin Minsky; Taslima Nasrin; Jack Nicholson; Camille Paglia; Roman Polanski; Katha Pollitt; Jean-Pierre Rampal; James Randi; Ron Reagan Jr.; Christopher Reeve; Salman Rushdie; George Soros; Gore Vidal; Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; etc.)
¶ It includes entries that explain philosophic terms related to freethinking (e.g., agnosticism, anthropomorphism; belief; causality; deism, empiricism, Ethical Culture, fideism, logical positivism, naturalism, pragmatism, secular humanism, transcendentalism, unitarianism). It lists all known international atheist, freethought, and humanist groups, their officers, and their World Wide Web and e-mail addresses.
¶ It includes examples of interviews with or of correspondence pertaining to humanism that has been collected over a period of five decades (e.g., James Truslow Adams, Conrad Aiken, Van Meter Ames, Maxwell Anderson, George Axtelle, John Cage, Arthur C. Clarke, George Counts, Norman Cousins, E. E. Cummings, John Dewey, Royston Ellis, Ian Franckenstein, Robert Frost, George Raymond Geiger, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Graves, Nat Henthoff, Sinclair Lewis, Walter Lippmann, Archibald MacLeish, Thomas Mann, Kenneth Pobo, Allen Walker Read, Ned Rorem, Lord Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, Albert Schweitzer, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and William Carlos Williams)