Focusing especially on Christianity but including other religions, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion during a time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

*Starred Review* The new book by the premier contemporary historian of religion is a history of God, from the implications of the cave paintings of Lascaux, through pagan and Eastern religions (with and without gods), through the pre-modern understandings of the great monotheisms, to the God and the reactive atheism of modernity. Armstrong stresses that the most common response to questions about God has been silence. This is the apophatic perspective, which holds that God is beyond words, a reality that eludes measurement, specification, even conception. This reality was apprehended by means of rituals such as those practiced by the mystery cult at Eleusis, 20 miles from ancient Athens, and is expressed by the famous I am what I am in Moses' encounter with the burning bush, which, Armstrong explains, was equivalent to Never mind who I am because the nature of God was beyond discussion. Indeed, until the modern period, she reveals, belief in the religious sense didn't mean assent to a creed or doctrine but trust in, commitment to, and active engagement with truth that cannot be spoken. The definite God of modernity especially the hyperdefined God of fundamentalism and its complement, atheism, are nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments reflecting the materialist rationality of science and technology. Perhaps post-modernism's corrosive effect on all certainties can help revitalize religion in the twenty-first century. Presenting difficult ideas with utter lucidity, this registers at once as a classic of religious and world history.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2009 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.