Michael Poole is a Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King's College London. If he has a religious affiliation he doesn't reveal it, but states that, when talking of God, he has (like Dawkins) the Judaeo-Christian concept of God in mind. In science he holds the mainstream views of cosmology and biology. His short (96 pages, 10 chapters and an index) book deals with the “new” and strident atheism preached by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. The emphasis is mainly on Dawkins and his book The God Delusion. Poole writes for people “without a lot of time for reading” but who would like to see some “short responses to key claims” of the new atheism. In this Poole succeeds very well. Each of his ten chapters is devoted to a key argument or assertion of the trio. From the first assertion (“Religion is evil because many bad deeds have been done by religious people”) to the tenth (“some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwin does for biology, rendering God improbable”), Poole presents pithy and relatively brief counter arguments. His counter arguments do not present an unanswerable case for religion, but they do expose Dawkins' ineptitude, even downright silliness, in subjects outside his own specialist field. Unlike some atheist opponents of Dawkins, and definitely unlike Dawkins himself, Poole does not resort to sarcasm and mockery despite ample opportunity to do so. As a short, sharp answer to Dawkins and others it is essential reading. Atheism must look elsewhere for a worthy champion!