Dozens of books and articles have been written about New Atheism and its leading figures, yet the literature suffers from two serious limitations. First, most studies only discuss New Atheism's most prominent representatives: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. Some commentators focus even more narrowly on one or two of them. This overlooks the many other intellectuals involved in the movement and, even more seriously, its mass base. As Steven Kettell correctly notes, most New Atheists are “arranged in a loosely connected, non-hierarchical and decentralised fashion, with no formal representative” (“Faithless: The Politics of New Atheism,” In Secularism & Nonreligion, Vol. 2, 64). Second, most studies reiterate the same, often superficial, criticisms of New Atheism. In particular, detractors attempt to show that New Atheism is a militant effort to expunge religion from public life.

Stephen LeDrew in The Evolution of New Atheism makes a noteworthy effort to overcome the first limitation. LeDrew says at the outset that his goal is “to bring a sociological perspective to this topic, which to date has primarily been the province of philosophers and theologians” (2). To do this, LeDrew not only considers the work of New Atheism's leading figures but also those who tend to be marginalized in the secondary literature, such as Steven Pinker, A.C. Grayling, Victor Stenger, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Lawrence Krauss. More importantly, he shows that “It is not restricted to a group of elite thinkers; rather, it is an ideology that informs the practices of a burgeoning social movement and a vast and disparate network of secular communities” (54). With this in mind, he interviews 15 of New Atheism's grassroots activists. These interviews are LeDrew's most original contribution.

LeDrew traces the movement's intellectual roots in historical variants of humanistic and scientific atheism. He emphasizes the divergent political orientations of these types of atheism, with the former attempting to overcome the conditions of life that give rise to religion and the latter attacking religion to promote enlightenment. LeDrew not only sees New Atheism as the continuation of scientific atheism but also as “an extension and manifestation of the modern project of scientific mastery of the world and the rationalization of society” (15). The evolutionary perspective continues as LeDrew evaluates the movement's development over the past decade. He discusses New Atheism's catalysts — ranging from September 11, 2001, to the decline of religious sentiments, to the growth of religious conservatism — then covers the landmark events in the movement's history. This effort to historicize New Atheism improves on studies that treat it as a single unchanging phenomenon.

In terms of the second limitation of the existing literature — the need for more substantive critiques — The Evolution of New Atheism makes few improvements. A defining feature of the critical commentary is an effort to affix some negative label to New Atheism, calling it aggressive, militant, or even “intolerant chauvinistic and bigoted” (When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, 1). Here LeDrew follows the familiar pattern, offering “fundamentalist” as the label and attempting to show that “New Atheism is a secular fundamentalism, a modern utopian ideology that is also an active movement for social transformation” (2). Critiquing New Atheism is vital to understanding it and countering any objectionable beliefs or practices. Nevertheless, the quality of critique suffers when the central focus is attaching a label like fundamentalist. This even runs counter to LeDrew's own sociological investigation. He painstakingly establishes the movement's complexity, only to reduce it to a relatively simplistic target. For example, he calls New Atheism “a defense of the position of the white middle-class Western male” (3), which correctly notes the class and gender biases of the movement's early leaders. Nevertheless, LeDrew's analysis challenges the accuracy of this characterization by showing that New Atheism is becoming more diverse. Even more problematic is that LeDrew does not consider the many efforts to dispel the well-worn charge of New Atheist fundamentalism. Failing to give the other side its due lowers the quality of the critique and prevents it from improving on previous research.

LeDrew's critique focuses on “the political ideology that underwrites all of New Atheist discourse” (54) — a promising effort to evaluate the links between religion and politics. However, his exploration of New Atheism's political import leads to an unsatisfying effort to map the movement onto existing ideological binaries. He counters “the assumption that the secular movement is liberal and progressive” (2) with the claim “that there is a deeply conservative dimension to it that compels us to recognize the existence of an ‘atheist Right’” (2–3). Moreover, while LeDrew correctly identifies conservative strands in New Atheist thought, it is unclear what we should make of these or why these discredit the movement. With a heterogeneous mass base and a diverse array of intellectuals at the helm, including such avowed contrarians as Hitchens, we should be surprised if there were not affinities with conservatism and various other political ideologies.

Despite the book's goal of exploring the political character of New Atheism, the discussion of how it intercedes in contemporary political debates is fairly weak. LeDrew shows that New Atheists have taken questionable positions, such as Harris’ defense of torture and Hitchens’ support for the Iraq War. However, he fails to consider their underlying motives, whether these views reflect core values of New Atheism, or the extent to which other New Atheists have openly disagreed with these positions. A more thoughtful approach would be to explore the conservative aspects of New Atheism not with the goal of mobilizing this as evidence of secular fundamentalism but as part of an effort to understand how secular and conservative causes become aligned.

Stephen LeDrew's The Evolution of New Atheism has mixed success in advancing research on New Atheism. On the one hand, it provides thoughtful sociological analysis and original data about grassroots activists. On the other, it makes a familiar central argument of New Atheist fundamentalism without the same degree of depth. The book's value therefore comes primarily from what it can contribute to our understanding of New Atheism as a social movement. It paves the way for studying New Atheism as a dynamic and complex phenomenon that cannot be fairly reduced to its leading proponents and raises the prospect of critical evaluations that are more attuned to that complexity.