About this item
The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America, Imagine There's No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization. At each juncture common themes emerge: by questioning the role of gods in the heavens or the role of a God in creating man on earth, nonbelievers help move science forward. By challenging the divine right of monarchs and the strictures of holy books, nonbelievers, including Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, help expand human liberties, and influence the early founding of the United States. Revolutions in science, in politics, in philosophy, in art, and in psychology have been led, on multiple occasions, by those who are free of the constraints of religious life.
About the Author
Mitchell Stephens' newest book -- a biography of the seminal journalist and adventurer Lowell Thomas -- will be published by St. Martin's Press in June 2017.
He published three new books, all of which he had been working on for many years, in 2014:
* Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World -- a history of atheism and its accomplishments (Palgrave Macmillan)
* Beyond News: The Future of Journalism - a historical argument for a wiser journalism, based on research at Harvard's Shorenstein Center (Columbia University Press)
* Journalism Unbound -- a call for journalism and journalism education to aim higher (Oxford University Press)
Professor Stephens is also the author of A History of News, an extended history of journalism that has been translated into four languages and was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." (A new edition was published by Oxford University Press in 2006.) His well reviewed book, the rise of the image the fall of the word, a historical analysis of our current communications revolution, was published in 1998 and is available from Oxford University Press.
In addition, Professor Stephens has written two textbooks: Broadcast News (now in its fourth edition) , long the most widely used radio and television news textbook, and the co-author of Writing and Reporting the News (a third edition of this book was published in 2007 by Oxford) .
He is a long-time professor of Journalism at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Institute and has served three terms as chair of the Department of Journalism there. In 2009 he was a fellow at the Harvard's Shorenstein Center, working on a project on the future of journalism.
Over the years, Professor Stephens has written numerous articles on media issues and aspects of contemporary thought for publications such as the Daedalus, New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Columbia Journalism Review. He was one of five editors of the book Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11 (Bonus Books) .
In 2001, Professor Stephens completed a trip around the world, during which he reported on globalization for the public radio program "Marketplace" and the webzine Feed and wrote essays on travel for LonelyPlanet.com. His commentaries have aired on NPR's "On the Media." He has been history consultant to the Newseum.
Professor Stephens has been involved in a number of media development projects overseas since 1993 - including two large State Department University-Partnership Grants, which he directed, with Rostov State University in Russia. Professor Stephens has also taught or organized exchanges in Georgia, Ghana and India. He was director of the Russian-American Journalism Institute in Rostov.
In 2006, Professor Stephens won a gr
