kristinaray717's review against another edition
4.0
Obviously not exhaustive, but it covers a lot for a small book. I enjoyed his insights and the way he wove everything together. It gives a basic history without bias, and provokes much thought. I’d recommend this to anyone interested in the history of religion, but doesn’t want to go too deep right at the get go.
turbomandoll's review against another edition
3.0
Commendably broad overview of the World's religions. I listened to it as an audio book which may not have been the best method, as there's a lot of information to take on board, but it was always a diverting listen.
nupsilon's review against another edition
3.0
An accessible and straight-forward introduction to the history of religion. I was afraid it would be just a grocery list of the main religions, but it turned out to be much more than that. The author points out the links between the different religions and intelligently explains their creation process and the reasoning behind it. He manages to define prophets, fundamentalism and other complex concepts in a way that's easy to understand. His explanations were enlightening for me; I grew up in an atheist family, so I didn't know much about religion beyond the very basics.
nobodyatall's review against another edition
5.0
Read this after hearing about it in a reddit thread discussing books about religion. This was put forward as an excellent non partisan work on belief, god and religions.
It is pretty excellent. It covers all the big name religions over the last 4000 Year’s from Hinduism through to Scientology and Secular Humanism. It explores how the faiths developed and influenced each other and why people believe.
It seemed to me to be pretty balanced and doesn’t push any point or belief as right or wrong, leaving it all open to the reader. It comes from a perspective of ‘Humans and the things they believe in and the structures they build around these things are very interesting’ rather than the ‘I am right and this is why and everyone else is an idiot’ that you tend to get in a lot of works about faith.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in humans and their religions.
It is pretty excellent. It covers all the big name religions over the last 4000 Year’s from Hinduism through to Scientology and Secular Humanism. It explores how the faiths developed and influenced each other and why people believe.
It seemed to me to be pretty balanced and doesn’t push any point or belief as right or wrong, leaving it all open to the reader. It comes from a perspective of ‘Humans and the things they believe in and the structures they build around these things are very interesting’ rather than the ‘I am right and this is why and everyone else is an idiot’ that you tend to get in a lot of works about faith.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in humans and their religions.
joaomiguel's review against another edition
3.75
Interesting for anyone who wants to know more about the timeline, the ideas and the who's behind religion. A great beginning step towards a better understanding of how it all began and still thrives.
abdelrahman_ahmed's review against another edition
5.0
كان من الممكن ان الكاتب يغير اسمه لمختصر تاريخ الكنسيةمن كثرة حديثه عنها عموما الكتاب دسم وبيعرض كل ديانة من وجهة نظرها مع الخوض في بعض المواضيع مثل وجهة نظر الاسلام في البعث والجهاد كنت اتمني ان المترجم يسيب هوامش للمساعدة اكتر ولكن للاسف لا يوجد