Paradise - Kevin Rushby

Brought up by parents who belonged to and were expelled from a fundamentalist Christian sect, Kevin Rushby learnt when young that promises of paradise are not always what they seem. From the Church in the Middle Ages to the people who prepare suicide bombers, or even Make Poverty History campaigners, there is always someone promising a better tomorrow if only we'll do what they say.

Rushby sets out on two journeys: a physical one to the Mountain of the Assassins in Iran, home of the myth that 'bright-eyed maidens of Paradise' await those who die serving Allah. And an intellectual one, back through the history of our ideas about Paradise in the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions.

The Ancient Greeks divided writing into tales of the gods (mythos) and verifiable facts (logos). Rushby reveals the reasons why we have come to live in such a divided world by showing how rationalist thought stretches from Pythagoras to Jacobean England and how tales of the gods have brought destruction and terror, from the Book of Relevations to the London Underground in 2005.

See www.kevinrushby.com