Humor certainly makes religion bearable for even those averse to the divine. What you see in the title is what you get: a snarky, laugh-out-loud exploration of a funny person’s spiritual journey.

“Magisterial” is the adjective of choice to describe Armstrong’s work; her usual confident sweep across times and cultures rises above the “answer-the-atheists” tired angle to make a passionate footnoted argument for the human need for a God.

Ask a poet--please--why God permits suffering, and you get a meditative fresh breath of a response, the beauty of which, like the great biblical reflections, provides sympathy and a tiny bit of relief.

Go after a question with head, heart and soul, as did journalist Hagerty, observing neuroscientists, mystics and those who have had near-death experiences. The result is a well-narrated book of authoritative voices and personal reflections, eminently readable, on a subject that attracts its share of woo-woo authors.

Almost 35 years after the influential and bestselling The Secular City, Cox continues to offer the big picture, a worldwide view of where religion is heading: an era of spirit, beyond faith and dogmatic belief.

For someone who is not a professional religionist, Albom knows how to find the sacred in the everyday--again--in a finely observed story of two very different men of faith, an ex-junkie pastor who works with the homeless and a rabbi who wants Albom to deliver his eulogy.

Page after page of reflection, observation and unsparing honesty add up to an eloquent, well-seasoned life that is an ordinary and occasionally holy search for meaning.

An English scholar who is not a theologian sifts through centuries of writings that imagine and reimagine one of history’s most reviled and compelling figures.

This accessible history by a scholar who is not among the usual academic talking-head experts on Islam brings breadth and nuance to an important subject.

An inspired pairing of writer and subject revivifies the life and times of the 11th-century Talmudic sage.