Michael Martin's book is a long, comprehensive and detailed discussion of arguments for and against belief in the existence of God. It is divided into two parts. Part I is a justification of what Martin calls 'negative atheism', which is the position of not believing in God, while Part II is a justification of'positive atheism', the thesis that there is no God. It is not easy to decide who is Martin's intended reader. On the back cover are quotations from reviews. One reviewer says 'It is not written for philosophers, but for intel? ligent laymen', while another says 'The book is designed for philosophers'. The fact is that neither group can read the book without needing to read a good deal else as well. This is because Martin's technique is to develop his position by attacking arguments attempting to justify theism, and by giving arguments intended to justify positive atheism, not only his own, but also those by a range of contemporary philosophers, and by attacking defences against the attacks, and so on. The number of books, chapters of books, and articles by contemporary writers alone that he cites is enormous, and as a result he has to provide brief summaries of the positions which he is going to attack or defend. But as soon as one tries seriously to engage with, say, his critique of John Hick in the chapter on 'Soul Making Theodicy', one finds the need to go back to Hick's own writings in order to re-read (or, it may well be, read for the first time) the texts which Martin bases his discussion on. Thus for example one finds passages like ' Hick maintains that.... Plantinga's version... is a successful defense against Mackie's thesis that...'. I very much doubt if intelligent laymen will want to continue with this sort of thing for long, and even philosophers with access to an adequate library are unlikely to read the book through from beginning to end as a single sustained discussion. Rather, I think one has to see the book as a kind of handbook, in which one can obtain brief summaries of a remarkably wide set of sources in contemporary philosophy of religion (of a highly analytic kind) together with attacks, defences, and summaries of other attacks and defences. Why does Martin adopt this exhausting technique? I think he is ex? hausting because he wants to be exhaustive. He seems to have a conception