I read this little book hoping to patch up my general knowledge about Judaism, and I feel like my expectations have been met. The larger half of the book is a history of Judaism. It does its job quite well and is reasonably well written. The second, shorter half is concerned with religious practice, this part is a little less entertaining, a little more chaotic, it feels like the author was struggling deciding what to include and what to leave out. All in all this book met, but did not exceed, my expectations. Solid 3/5 stars. Also little sidenote: the author is weirdly concerned with demographics and birthrates. You'll find sentences like: "mixed marriages lead to a loss of thousands of Jews every year" like my guy that is some crazy phrasing. Anyway. I'd like to find a similar little book for the other world religions, especially Islam which I feel embarrassingly uneducated about.