God: A Human History of Religion
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In God, Reza Aslan sheds new light on mankind’s relationship with the divine and challenges our perspective on the history of faith and the birth of religion.
From the origins of spiritual thought to the concept of an active, engaged, divine presence that underlies all creation, Aslan examines how the idea of god arose in human evolution, was gradually personalized, endowed with human traits and emotions, and eventually transformed into a single Divine Personality: the God known today by such names as Yahweh, Father, and Allah.
Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, God challenges everything we thought we knew about the origins of religious belief, and with it our relationship with life and death, with the natural and spiritual worlds, and our understanding of the very essence of human existence.
Reviews:
"A brief and lively history... Extraordinary." -Spectator
"Aslan turns Genesis on its head. The extent of our divine anthropomorphism is fascinating. As an introductory biography of a figure who has good claim to be called the most influential of all time, it is interesting indeed." -The Sunday Times
"Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary." -Huffington Post
"[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing." -Los Angeles Review of Books
"Reza Aslan offers so much to relish in his excellent ‘Human History’ of God. In tracing the commonalities that unite religions, Aslan makes truly challenging arguments that believers in many traditions will want to explore further, and to mull over. This rewarding book is very ambitious in its scope, and it is thoroughly grounded in an impressive body of reading and research." -Philip Jenkins, author of Crucible of Faith
