OUTSTANDING! Read this as soon as you can and then give it to a friend. If you'd like me to grab one for you, message me, and I'll make that happen.

A friend gave me a copy of this that she had as a spare (because someone had given her a couple copies with the instructions above) and said, "It's really well written. I bet you could read it in a weekend." I read it in about five hours, probably, the last of which was reading quite a bit out loud to my captive family. The Air We Breathe is a straightforward work of apologetics that spells out the rest of its title. Scrivener devotes a chapter to each of the values, plus a few more. His thesis is not new-- our entire culture and worldview in the west is WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic and it is that way because of Christianity, or as Scrivener often puts it, The Jesus Revolution/Movement, which is slightly more accurate if you're familiar with the background of that terminology. Anyone who objects to this, citing Christianity's failure to live up to its stated claims, can only do so because Christianity imbued everything about the last two thousand years with those values, down to the atomic/subconscious level.

Scrivener's writing is straightforward and relatable. It is occasionally even charming. He does require a bit of background knowledge-- you have to understand that the ancient world: Egypt, Greece, Rome, was not just like the current Western world with less technology. Its values were entirely different and "barbaric" seems a very tame word to describe societies that thought nothing of rape, murder, and slavery-- because that was the way the world was meant to be. Who could or would dare to question it?

Scrivener draws from several rich sources, which he duly and consistently notes. If you're interested in exploring any of the ideas in greater depth, those references are where to start.

Wonderful read. Off to go buy more copies for others!