The Catholic Church, the First 2000 Years: A Popular Survey and Study Guide to Church History

Rating:
Summary: Very good overview of Church History
Review: I recently finished reading this book. Having not read much for the past few years, I've started to find time to read, specifically to learn more about my faith.

One confusing aspect has always been the history of the Catholic Church. Discussions end up about how the Catholic Church did this or that which seperated it from the true teachings of the Apostles and Christ.

This book is wonderfully easy to read. It delivers on the promise of easy to read for the non-scholarly. It is organized into chapters with different periods and main themes of those periods. The chapters overlap somewhat, enough to bring together common themes or how various aspects of history are connected. Each chapter has several subtopics, with discussion questions at the end and short discription of saint related to the topic of the chapter.

I expect this book can be useful to me as an easy reference. Each chapter outlines what is dicussed and is highlighted on the edge with dark paper. As mentioned earlier, it provides enough background from other chapters to make each chapter stand on its own, especially after reading through once.

I also appreciate learning of specific miracles and how they directly affected the local people of that time.

I recommend this book, especially for the "non-scholoarly" or those that are not history buffs.