Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries: Armstrong, Karen, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, Knopf, 2006.

In our current age of “The Great Transformation” Armstrong postulates how the sages of the foundational Axial Age would address unspeakable horror, violence, and desperation.The distinctive and historic Axial Age faiths announced the abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. They stated that there must first be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action.Herein lie the problematic aspects of Armstrong’s work and why this book is not recommended. The most serious flaw of this work is in ascribing evidence for ethical behavior in almost all religious behavior and ritual (xiii, 35). Armstrong seems to miss the insight of Rene Girard and Walter Burkert who have demonstrated how violence and the sacred are inextricably linked. Other problems are that oddly, she states that Hitler expressed a “militant exclusion of religion from public policy” (395). In fact, Hitler divided German Christians by founding the Patriotic Church in contrast to the Confessing Church. One other interesting side note is that Armstrong’s research is based on out of date works; only 36 of 284 works cited in the bibliography were published in 2000 or later.