This is a fascinating book. The author’s expressed aim is to reunite science with religion, man with nature, inspired wonder with objective rationality. His story boils down to the importance of relationships of every type. Thus he takes it as given that we need both science and religion to make sense of the cosmos and our place in it. However, religion and science have grown apart. Consequently a communication chasm has opened up, and our culture now pays less attention to religion. He holds that this loss of spiritual content has left society at the mercy of the paid professional spin meisters and has left people vulnerable to addictions (eg wealth, oil, drugs).

He uses climate change as a recurrent example of the challenges we face. Importantly he sees climate change as providing an opportunistic crisis, forcing us to reassess our relationship with nature. Hence ecology is presented as the source of inspirations that will reunite our fractured cultures.

Nevertheless the route to recovery will not be plain sailing. For instance to accommodate the dialogues, he believes we shall have to pare religion back to a focus on its core values of love and unity. Certainly this book deserves to be widely read. It extolls a religious viewpoint without misrepresenting science or spirituality. However, watch out for the way he applies words such as rationality, intuition and religion in an unfamiliar generalized sense. ( )