“A well-annotated, impartial anthology of key texts from world religions—including the primitive, ancient, and esoteric alongside the living faiths of both Western and Eastern cultures . . . The excerpts are grouped by faiths and subclassified by type: sacred narratives, doctrines, rituals, institutional expressions, experience, and ethics . . . There are good bibliographies at the end of each section.”

“Distinctive in selecting excerpts not only from classic religious texts but also from those of long-dead faiths (Greek, Egyptian, etc.) from ‘small-scale traditional religions’ (American Indian, Polynesian), from new religious bodies (Mormon, Moonie) and from secular world views (Bertrand Russell, Marx, U.N. charter preamble). Religions with sections all their own are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and Sikhism.”