mid twentieth century – specifically, the period from George MacDonald's retirement as editor of The Truth Seeker in 1937 until the rise of Madalyn Murray O'Hair in 1963 – was a fallow period in American freethought. Lewis and Haldeman-Julius were essentially the only nationally visible public atheists of this period, and of those two, only Lewis was prominent not only as a publisher but as an activist. As for O'Hair (whom Lewis successfully sued for libel in 1967), her rise to prominence was occasioned by her unexpected victory in a U. S. Supreme Court church-state case, one much like the lawsuits Lewis had repeatedly brought to far more modest success. Lewis played an important role as a bridging figure between the Golden Age of Freethought and the reappearance of atheism on the public stage in the 1960s. Personal life Lewis was the sixth of the eight (or according to one source, eleven) children of Samuel Lewis and Rachel ("Ray") Levy. In 1914 he married Fay Jacobs, with whom he had two children, a son who died in 1920, and a daughter, Claire. While the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief implies that the marriage ended with Fay's death, other sources indicate they were divorced in 1948. In 1952 Lewis married Ruth Stoller Grubman. They remained married until Joseph's death in 1968. His wife as well as his daughter were like-minded persons and had the same opinion on many essential things. In addition to his devotion to the ideas of Paine and atheism, he liked to study astronomy and physics. Lewis was a theater-goer and was a fan of Ibsen. He died of heart attack at the age of 79 in his office. Bibliography The Tyranny of God (1921) Lincoln, the Freethinker (1925) Jefferson, the Freethinker (1925) The Bible Unmasked (1926) Franklin, the Freethinker (1926) Burbank, the Infidel (1929) Voltaire, the Incomparable Infidel (1929) Atheism, a collection of his public addresses (1930) The Bible and the Public Schools (1931) Should Children Receive Religious Instruction? (1933) The Ten Commandments (1946) Thomas Paine, Author of the Declaration of Independence (1947) In the Name of Humanity (1949) An Atheist Manifesto (1954) The Tragic Patriot (1954) Ingersoll, The Magnificent (1957) References External links Works by Joseph Lewis at Positive Atheism 1889 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American non-fiction writers American atheism activists Critics of Christianity Freethought writers Jewish American atheists Writers from Montgomery, Alabama 19th-century atheists 20th-century atheists