Journalist takes governments to task for not acting against polygamous communities. The research and Bramham’s patient laying out of the facts goes a long way to explaining how a normal society ignores the illegal — and immoral — exploitation of children practiced by a messianic cult.

When describing each phenomenon, J. Gordon Melton’s tone whipsaws between critical and credulous, often without obvious justification.

In 2001, rumors started to hit the blogosphere that Antony Flew, a British philosopher born in 1923, had found God after six decades of atheism. At first Flew denied the reports. But in May 2004 he told a conference in New York that he had indeed changed his mind and become a believer.

You couldn’t beat it for tabloid fodder: Anointed prophet of a secretive evangelical mission-cum-sex cult slits the throat of an ex-nanny, and then kills himself, in protest against the cult leaders, his parents, for years of sex abuse he says he and many other children suffered. And he made a video first.

How did George W. Bush happen? That question has preoccupied the American left for more than six years, producing several shelves of books. Few of the books have been as erudite as Earl Shorris’ “The Politics of Heaven.”

Ultimately, “God Is Not Great” is somewhat of a disappointment — not so much for those who disagree, who will simply be irritated, but for those of us who think that it has an important case to make and were hoping that this might be the book to carry that message to the people.

Historian Ronald Hutton delights in both debunking and celebrating paganism. His new study of the Druids will probably annoy their modern followers, but Gary Lachman finds him unrepentant.

McPherson’s “willingness to engage with American culture … ultimately redefined the relationship among social activism, religion, gender, and the media in the United States.�

There are two murders in “Murder in Amsterdam.” The first took place on May 6, 2002, when an animal-rights advocate, for obscure reasons, gunned down Pim Fortuyn, a charismatic politician with a populist program combining law-and-order conservatism, opposition to immigration and gay liberation. About a year and a half later a young Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, incensed by a film critical of Islam, shot the filmmaker-provocateur Theo van Gogh dead in broad daylight. As a parting gesture, he pinned a manifesto to the twitching body with a knife. It was all, as the prime minister of the Netherlands put it, “un-Dutch.”

BRAINWASH: The Secret History of Mind Control [Order from Amazon UK | Order from Amazon USA]

At least since Gilgamesh went on a quest for immortality in the ancient Babylonian epic that bears his name, road novels have often doubled as flights of spiritual fancy. In "Dharma Bums," for example, Jack Kerouac read the pilgrimages of his Beat Generation friends through the lens of "A Buddhist Bible," an anthology of Zen and other Buddhist scriptures edited by the Christian-minister-turned-Buddhist-advocate Dwight Goddard.

In his book about extreme forms of religious practices, former Rancho Bernardo resident J.C. Hallman did not have to look far for one of the most striking examples of a belief gone wrong.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

THE GOD FACTOR: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People. By Cathleen Falsani. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux Book Publishers. 263 pages. $24.00.

Critic's Choice: