Clara’s Verdict
Three hours and four minutes. That is the whole of this audiobook, and I want the number first because it changes what you should expect. The Four Horsemen is not a treatise on religion and atheism. It is the record of a single conversation between four people who, in the publisher’s phrase, “met only once”, together with the new introductions three of them later wrote about it.
Understood on those terms it is a real pleasure, and a short one. Understood as a comprehensive statement of the arguments, it will disappoint, because a conversation that happened once cannot be a survey. One of the reviewers gets the framing exactly right by calling it “a book about a recorded conversation”, which is more precise than the title manages.
One more thing before you decide, because the credits are confusing. The author credit goes to Christopher Hitchens alone. The narration credit and the copyright line both go to Richard Dawkins. The book itself is a four-way exchange, and a single byline cannot represent that.
About the Audiobook
The conversation ranges across religion and atheism, science and sense, with the four participants agreeing, disagreeing, interrogating ideas and exchanging insights. The publisher lists some of what they asked each other, and the questions are better than any summary: “Is it ever possible to win a war of ideas?”, “Is spirituality the preserve of the religious?”, “Are there any truths you would rather not know?” and “Would you want to see the end of faith?” The last of those is the one I would most want to hear answered, because the copy promises four people who both “agreed and disagreed with one another”, and a question about abolishing the thing you argue against is exactly where an apparent consensus tends to come apart.
One structural point deserves emphasis, because it determines what you actually hear. The copy states that “The dialogue was recorded, and is now transcribed and presented here with new introductions from the surviving three horsemen”. This edition is therefore built from a transcript rather than being the original recording, and the phrase about the surviving three carries its own quiet weight about how much time has passed. If hearing the original voices in the original room is what you want, listen to the sample before committing, because that is not what the description promises.
The edition also carries “a sparkling introduction from Stephen Fry”, which one reviewer singles out as a highlight in its own right. Transworld Digital published this edition on 14 February 2019 with Penguin Audio credited on the recording, and it belongs to no series.
The Narration
Richard Dawkins is credited as narrator, and the copyright line stands in the same name, so this is a reading by someone with a stake in the material rather than by a neutral hired voice. What the material in front of me does not establish is whether Dawkins was one of the four in the room. The copy never names them. I am not going to assume it, and if that matters to you, the credits and the sample will settle it faster than I can.
The structural point stands whoever is reading. A four-way conversation delivered by a single voice is a fundamentally different object from four voices in a room. The rhythm of interruption, the overlap, the pause before someone quietly concedes a point, all of that is the substance of good conversation, and a transcript keeps the words while losing the timing. What reaches you is one person reporting what four people said. That can be very good indeed, but it is a different thing.
At just over three hours this is a single-sitting listen, or two commutes. Given the density of the exchange I would take it in two, and I would not multitask through it. The value sits in the turns of argument, and by the publisher’s own account the examination was “intense and wide-ranging”, which is a great deal to move through in one short recording.
What Readers Say
The written reviews here are notably thoughtful, which suits the material. The score of 4.5 rests on 1,288 ratings, and nobody in that pool assesses the reading: at least two of the three are plainly writing about a copy they held rather than one they played, since one mentions an e-book purchase and another counts the days it took to finish.
Dazaster, at five stars, singles out Stephen Fry’s foreword as “laced with both wit and admiration” for the four, then makes an observation I found genuinely sharp: faced with that much intellect and rational argument it is hard not to simply accept everything said, which would be precisely the wrong response, given that questioning and challenge are the whole basis of these writers’ position. That is a reviewer arguing with themselves, which is rarer than it should be.
Doc Culbard’s four-star review is the most descriptive of the pool, beginning to lay out who the four are and naming Sam Harris as the neuroscientist before the text breaks off. Thomas Burgess is briefer and warmer, calling it “A superb little book” and “concise”, noting that it “covers a lot of major topics on religion”, that it was read from beginning to end inside a couple of days, and recommending it as “an easy introduction into other, more comprehensive works on religion”. I would frame the book in exactly those terms.
Who Should Listen?
It will frustrate anyone hoping for a balanced encounter between belief and unbelief. Every voice in this conversation is on the same side, by design, and the book makes no claim otherwise. It will also frustrate anyone who wants depth instead of range, since the publisher’s own word for the examination is wide-ranging, and three hours is not long to range in.
Three hours is, however, a small enough investment that curiosity alone justifies it, and curiosity is the right reason to come. This suits anyone who wants the arguments in miniature, anyone who enjoys watching allies discover where they part company, and anyone who has read one of these writers at length and would like to hear how the position sounds under friendly pressure. It is a sensible entry point for a reader unwilling to commit to a full-length polemic first.
