Prayer: A History by Carol Zaleski

Prayer: A History Reviews

• 
  John

  Meh. A sort of strange tour of the history of prayer through the lens of many traditions. In trying to accomplish everything, though, Zaleski hasn't really accomplished that much. The book is interesting enough, but doesn't take faith (as opposed to spirituality) seriously enough to make the book go anywhere. It's basically what the NY Times would do if it was tasked with writing such a history. Well written, but in the end too disinterested with the subject and interested with the writing itself to do what you would hope it would do.
• 
  Ross Heinricy

  Very interesting look at prayer from a historical aspect, differing religious practices and principles and even prayer in art and music. I will be going back through this book over time, but over all very captivating, inviting and interesting. I even bought a print on Angelus - a painting about prayer!
• 
  Lynne

  I can't TELL you how much I wanted to like this book. The co-author is one of my favorite writers in The Christian Century, and prayer is a central life topic for me.
  
  But Philip loves to write long, wordy sentences, and long paragraphs. The book could use a tighter editorial hand.
  
  My real problem came at the front end of the book, where a few chapters left me so cold I nearly left the book unfinished. I skipped ahead, and finally found some traction as he approached Christian, Muslim and more particular and unusual religious/prayer practices, like Voodoo.
  
  Maybe part of the problem is all of this is very familiar territory for me. I may be too critical of the wide sweep of this book, but in general, it didn't do for me what I hoped: inspire, instruct, move.
  
  
• 
  Eric

  The nice thing about this book is that it shares lots of little biographies of great people in the world of faith history. The authors present material from several various faith perspectives, which allows the reader to get a bigger picture of how prayer affects humanity.
  
  The not so nice thing is that it was kind of long and hard to keep your attention on it for more than a few good pages at a time.
• 
  Alexandra

  [
  http://mllesays.blogspot.com/2007/03/...]
• 
  Scott

  read this along side The Battle for God
• 
  Cynthia

  Loved this.