In 1927 Sigmund Freud was 71 years old and in failing health when he wrote this short book about religion. The title is a misnomer — there is hardly anything about the future here at all. Instead, it offers Freud’s ideas about religion, including why it exists at all. Freud is a surprisingly readable author, even for people with only limited knowledge of psychology. “It forms no part of the intention of this study to comment on the truth-value of religious teachings,” he wrote. “We are content to recognize that, psychologically speaking, they are illusions.” Freud refrained from mentioning in this book the anti-religious campaigns then taking place in the Soviet Union. But surely he had them in mind when he wrote that “it is certainly a nonsensical plan to seek to abolish religion by force and at a stroke. Principally because there is no chance of its succeeding.” He was certainly right about that. Recommended.