Book Review With Commentary
After summarizing the early myths, Armstrong gets down to business in the middle of her book.
"Myths gave explicit shape and form to a reality that people sensed intuitively. They told them how the gods behaved, not out of idle curiosity or because these tales were entertaining, but to enable men and women to imitate these powerful beings and experience divinity themselves." Karen Armstrong
Armstrong traces how cultures generated their own myths and how they ofen had many myths in common. Beginning with cave drawings from antiquity, she traces events forward from Paleolithic times to 9/11.
Armstrong has great sympathy for mythology; she points out many useful features and how myth permeates modern life even as it lost ground during the Enlightenment. Like other writers, she occasionally gives an obscure meaning to a word more commonly used in another context.
This little book is a quick and enjoyable read for those intuitively inclined and an eye opener for the novice on this subject, even as she neglects extenuating circumstances on occasion.
We give it three stars on content, four stars on purpose and insight.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, November 18, 2005.
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