Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me start with an admission: I didn't finish reading this book. Please take that into consideration when reading my comments... I love bonobos and I'm an atheist, so I expected to submerge myself into a great read, but I'm struggling with this one. Reading de Waal's book is uncomfortable. I feel like I've walked into a private argument between people who evidently have spent years sniping at each other from afar -- but now de Waal has decided to take it to his opponents, personally. I wanted de Waal's insights to help explain why people think they need religion to be moral, but I have no idea what the hell he's talking about. He'll write a bit about apes, and then take off into an argument with "theoreticians" or (gasp!) "scientists" who evidently have tried to make points with which he disagrees. Who are these people he is criticizing? Is this another one of those arguments between humanists, skeptics, free-thinkers, and atheists? And what did they say that has pissed him off so much? I get it that he doesn't agree with the strident "new" atheists. I understand that a segment of the atheist community finds Richards Dawkins a bit, well... a bit too much. And Christopher Hitchens is an acquired taste, especially when he's at his angry best. (Disclosure: I enjoy reading Hitchens, and I value the time I saw him speak - a couple of days before he was told he had stage four cancer.) Are you with me, reader? If you don't know what I'm talking about, de Waal's book will make absolutely no sense to you. Even though I know some of the arguments of the popularized atheists Frans opposes, I still got lost when he started into people I don't know. De Waal has so much insight to add to the discussion of evolution, science, morals, and religion. It's too bad he had to waste his book (and his readers' time) engaging in personal attacks against fellow atheists. De Waal used this book to indulge his personal arguments, and it seems like he did it without paying due respect to his readers. If he fully respected his readers, he would have demanded the honest services of a better editor. At least, a good editor might have warned de Waal that he was taking too much liberty in indulging in esoteric arguments without preparing the reader. Or maybe they should have categorized the book as "Comparative Non-Religions 401," so novices like me would know what we were getting into. I write this with a heavy heart, because Frans' work with apes was groundbreaking, and we owe him tons of respect and appreciation. But I'm going to have to move on, to writers who demonstrate a bit more respect for average, every day readers.