LIVERPOOL BOOK LAUNCH: "Behind the Myths - The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam" by John Pickard
Saturday 26th October - 12 noon.
Venue: News From Nowhere - Radical and Community Bookshop, 96, Bold Street, L1 4HY.

This is a unique book which draws on the research, knowledge and expertise of hundreds of historians, archaeologists and other renowned scholars to create a new synthesis that is both coherent and completely based on material social conditions. It is a book written by an unbeliever for other unbelievers, independent of any supernatural or hidden social drivers. Behind the Myths will be a revelatory read, even to those already atheist or secularist, underpinning their non-religious views and it will provide a valuable resource for all those who might be coming to question the hold that organised religion has had on human society.

John Pickard has been a socialist and activist for just about all of his adult life. Apart from working as a research scientist in the pharmaceutical industry and as a secondary school teacher of science, he spent sixteen years working as a full-time journalist for the British Marxist newspaper Militant. He was managing editor of the newspaper during its best years, in the early 1980s, when the miners’ strike raged and the Liverpool City council fought against the then conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.

Behind the Myths: The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was inspired initially by Karl Kautsky’s book, The Foundations of Christianity (1908) although it seeks to update and broaden the scope of the work to include Judaism and Islam. This book is the fruit of ten years of research and study of all the current literature on the topic, looking at historical works through the critical lens of a Marxist worldview.