History of God: pages 1 - 60

      A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was written by Karen Armstrong, who has written 12 books about religion. She was a nun before questioning, 'what is god?' and answering with memorized sentences. She had trouble visualizing what part god played in her life, and became very prominent after this book was written, which was the first book she wrote, and became an international best  seller.
      The first section holds how she was raised as a nun, but left as she couldn't really see how god affected her. Then she talks about the three big monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She starts way back to start her long explanation of the history behind religion, and how at first, the idea of god was so exulted that the idea could have disappeared due to the lack of temples or priests to remind the people. Then it goes into how religion evolves, covering civilizations such as the Babylonians as well as famous philosophers covered in class such as Platos and Aristotle.
     The piece at first was a history lesson, covering what happened and why it happened that way, using quotes from other books as well as religious works. The audience is people curious about the history of religion, or even what it is. However, as an atheist, I have trouble deciphering the text as I get deeper in, almost as if i should keep a journal of all the terms defined next to me as I read, which may signify that the book is meant for more religious eyes.
     The book uses a lot of punctuation and grammar to hold the book together. The book itself has many sentences that go for 3 lines, and the punctuation such as semicolons and hyphens helps the reader to understand the flow of the book and the sentence. It is much needed, and helps with my understanding (though I did a lot of research and only about 13 pages in do i really understand exactly what is going on, names of people and languages, etc.) very much. The author uses many religious sources to show her understanding of the unraveling of history to find and understand religion, and in some ways, this backs her argument, but she states most of the actions as fact or cause and effect.
     I think she did an effective job of describing how religion grew, but I need to understand all of her references to have a clear grasp at what she really is trying to convey by narrating the history of religion.