The Great Transformation is typical of Armstrong's popularizing work. If you like to imagine great spiritual ideas emerging out of the human soul, this is a book for you. If you want to understand religion and its role in society you will need to look elsewhere. Ms. Armstrong cherry picks her history, and invents it where not pickable, to develop her position. To begin with there is no "axial age" in any meaningful sense unless you are trying to create some spiritual reality that to my mind does not exit. Her accessible writing style does not compensate for the conceptual and intellectual failures of this story.