Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness (Brill, 2016), by Patricia Crone, is part of the author's Collected Studies in Three Volumes, a compilation of a number of her published, unpublished, and revised writings on Near Eastern and Islamic history. The third piece in the collection, this volume places the rise of Islam in the context of the ancient Near East and investigates skeptical and subversive ideas in the Islamic world.