Rating: 
Summary: superficial and misleading
Review: Ms. Armstrong has done a poor job of relaying the essence of the three great monotheistic religions. She is terribly biased against Christianity and her narrative reveals a superficial understanding of biblical and church history and well as theology and philosophy. This reviewer would recommend reading either Jaraslov Pelikan's "The Christian Tradition" or J.N.D. Kelly's "Early Christian Doctrine's" to get a more accurate and insightful appreciation of the development of Christian ideas and doctrines. Since, I am less schooled in Jewish and Muslim traditions, I cannot recommend a good source, however, I'm sure that there are many better books on those traditions than what Ms. Armstrong presents.
Rating: 
Summary: No meaningful insights into the rise of monotheism
Review: As a westerner interested in Hinduism and Hindu iconography, I undertook reading this book to learn how and why "monotheism" became an overweening idea in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and prompted these religions to overrun and destroy indigenous religions. This book failed to provide meaningful insights.Instead, I found the same weaknesses that other reviewers found. Ms. Armstrong glorifies Islam, especially its tolerance of so-called "rightly guided religion," whereas religious persecution throughout Moslem history is but a logical outcome of putting the Koran and Sunnah into practice. I also find little in the Koran, aside from "paying the poor rate," that justifies Ms. Armstrong's claim that Islam is a religion of social justice. The inglorious history of Christianity is well known, even to Christians, but Ms. Armstrong pours bile at the whole venture of western Christianity and civilization, which she must have bought into when she was a Roman Catholic nun. I agree that this book reflects her personal bitterness. The dissing of luminaries of western civilization such as Pascal, Newton, and Descartes in the chapter "Enlightenment" was too much to take. I came away persuaded that Hinduism espoused the highest thinking about God, even before the revealed religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam came to be. All the exalted concepts of God identified in this book can be found in Hinduism. Hinduism also teaches that every person must discover these truths for himself or herself - and be transformed by these truths.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent (though slightly-biased) overview
Review: Armstrong's knowledge of the subject is impressive and she has a singular ability to reduce complex ideas into concise form, not to mention the fact that she is also a great story-teller. The reader should be warned however,that, as in her History of Jerusalem, she can be critical of western Christianity to point of being anti-[western] Christian. She also leaves untouched the darker aspects of the history of Islam. But her anti-western biases aside, I recommend this book (with the above caveats) as an excellent overview of the subject.
Rating:
Summary: More like the history of why the world's insane
Review: Armstrong successfully plugs the reader into each culture by giving him a detailed account of the three major religions of the world. I, being a neophyte in the way of Islam, felt like fighting in a jihad after her astounding account of Muhammed and the way the Muslim people have progressed. Armstrong's research and insight is incredible and she also slips in a few of her own diatribes (ex: love is used to make up for an abscence in one's life.) One qualm I have is Armstrong, as a nun in the Catholic church, didn't focus near as much on Christianity. She also discounts all the miracles performed in the Bible and tells the reader how they should be interpreted. However, this book is the 101 for the history of God.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking history
Review: As some of the other reviewers claim, Karen Armstrong may not have gotten all the facts aboslutely correct; nevertheless, this book is an impressive collection of the way humanity has viewed, changed and adapted the concept of "God" through the ages. It is also correct to say that Armstrong is not solely laying out historical facts, but peppers her writings with her personal views throughtout. In my opinion this is a major plus, it helps make this book more than dry history. If you ever wondered or questioned, this book is an excellent introduction to understand the interaction between humans and their monotheistic faiths.
Rating: 
Summary: A book with some inaccuracies
Review: The author tries to tackle a serious topic but seems to lack the proper training to accomplish this. I am not sure if people created God or God created people, but most certainly the author has done some creating of her own. There are some mistakes from simple ones such as changing Ibn' Arabi's first name from Muhyi al-Din to Muid al-Din, to some philosophical misrepresentation of Arabi's thought. She relates to Ibn' Arabi that Mohammed was the Perfect Man of "his generation" which is totally false according to all Sufi or non Sufi traditions. If she had read some of Ibne Arabi's books either in Arabic or the English translations such as the " Bezel Of the wisdom", and " Sufi Path to knowledge" or "Tao of Islam" her book would have been more accurate, if indeed accuracy has any meaning nowadays among the religious or philosophy scholarly communities. To most ordinary non-scholar people accuracy is still somewhat important. The other inaccurate representation of the mystical Islam is the notion of " Imaginal World", which has gotten everyone so excited thanks to Corbin, and seems that the author, inspite of repeated warning by Corbin in his fine book creative imagination in the sufism of Ibne Arabi, she mistakes it with " Imagination/Imaginary" as a human faculty. Then she goes on to do the same misrepresentation about the idea of "Imaginal World" and the notion of hell heaven as used by Sadra. The readers are invited to read one of Sadra's work translated into English " The wisdom of the throne" for a first hand comparison. I think the author tried to handle too much and wished to publish the book too quick and didn't give herself enough time. Or maybe this the way the "Philosophers" do things, if we in the field of engineering and science did such a clumsy work, we would be sued out of business in no time. It seems to me that what is lacking among the philosophy and religious scholarly community is a procedure for"Quality control" and as long as this aspect is lacking people will have little regards or respect for books of this nature. Is it any wonder that nowadays most people equate the word " philosophy" with " non-sense", the responsibility for this attitude lies at the feet of " philosophers" themselves. They need to take their profession and their audience more seriously or else when it comes to "respectability" they will be at the bottom of the scale.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but a bit biased
Review: The author certainly has done her research and puts it together quite well. Most of the book is really about Islam and the first five books of the Jewish/Christian Bible. The comments regarding the bias to Islam and the lack of information regarding Paul are justified. I wish that the author would have provided a more compelling reason for her conclusion on the path she saw of most benefit - rather than simply providing a biased justification by way of eliminating the other paths by way of her displeasure with them. Some interesting information gleaned from the book was how enlightened you will be as to how many dead-ends you can encounter when discussing/debating religion. Some issues are simply a matter of faith.
Rating:
Summary: AN EXTENSIVE BUT UNBLANCED WORK.
Review: This book should be more properly called, "A History of the Middle-Eastern God". The author is a serious spiriual seeker who writes as one who may be still reeling against some ealier conditionings in ortodox Christianity. There is much good material herein except for the use of some outdated models she still clings to. EG. on page 28 the author refers to the "Aryans who came from the west" and brought Spiritual knowledge etc, this notion has been disproven long ago. It reminds one of a similar notion that Rome had for over 1,000+ years about being the center of the world and the universe. The same shock that Copernicus and Galileo brought to Rome, is now being repeated by the wave of spiritual example and wisdom from India which has dominated the 20th century, and reached it's pinnacle when the mediterranean area peoples were still living in caves and worshipping idols. If the author would study and add the full contribution of India to this book, it would then be truly "A History of God".
Rating: 
Summary: AN EYE OPENING HISTORY OF GOD
Review: KAREN AMSTRONG HAS GIVEN ME ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS I'VE ALWAYS PONDERED INTERNALLY. HOW CAN WE DISMISS THE CULTURAL,GEOGRAPHICAL,AND POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES THAT INFLUENCED THESE RELIGIONS? DO MANY CHRISTIANS REALLY KNOW THE ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPTS THEY USE TO DEMONIZE NONBELIEVERS? THIS BOOK IS A REVELATION. BUT, I AGREE, THE SECTON ON ISLAM IS WAY TOO LONG
Rating:
Summary: A biassed and flawed history of monotheism
Review: Ms Armstrong does a fair job of recounting the biblical period, although she keeps on wanting to pronounce post-modernist judgements on Moses and other exponents of early Jewish thought. This is tedious, but sufferable until she gets to the birth of Christianity. Whatever one thinks of this religion or its consequences, a book like this cannot possibly dismiss Paul of Tarsus in 4 pages (Muhammed gets over 30). Ms Armstrong ignores many opportunities to discuss Paul- whom she considers the "inventor" of Christianity- in the light of the genesis of modern sects such as Mormons. Oh, by the way- she doesn't make this still daring thesis clear in her book- I read something else by her where the term was used. Not only that, but she manages a startling feat of not mentioning the Dead Sea scrolls, which resuted in a major paradigm shift in considering the origins of Christian dogma. For that matter, she completely omits the invention of dualism and much of morality we take for granted by ancient Persians, whose mention is paultry. In contrast, she spends an inordinate amount of time delving into mystics, a dead end from every modern point of view, then ends the book with an orgy of name-dropping of modern philosophers. Although she makes a big deal of calling the human Homo religicus, she does not care to extend the tour of modern philosophy to the effect and success of non-religious dogmas and moral systems which were proferrred as an alternative to religion this century. She almost does it with Nietsche, but then pulls away as if the implications for her central thesis rightly frighten her. ALthough I care for no religion, I find Ms Armstrong's penchant for deriding Christianity and Judaism whilst trumpeting Islam singularly uninspiring. By failing to extend to Islam the razor of her sarcasm, she invites distrust. History records that neither religion succeeded from restraining its followers' base instincts. In particular, I cannot accept that Moslems were a paradigm of tolerance until European colonialists shut down their moderate scholars and left the field to fundamentalists. A novice reader who finishes this book is advised to consider contrasting points of view. Iliya Englin
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