This timeline represents a vast undertaking for a single author. Using Egyptian records as a starting point, Melton has arranged major religious events and developments from around the world into a single chronology. This chronology is more inclusive, especially regarding traditional religions, than Tim Cooke, ed. Concise History of World Religions: An Illustrated Timeline (National Geographic, 2011). Melton also provides up to two paragraphs describing each event in the chronology, while the National Geographic publication usually provides only a single sentence. These differences account for the difference in length, where Faiths Across Time requires four volumes that are each approximately the size of the Concise History’s single volume.

Faiths Across Time includes a few longer, informative essays, usually a half page or a full page, on selected topics from the timeline. It also includes occasional grayscale photographs and illustrations. By comparison, the Concise History of World Religions includes more frequent essays, long chapter introductions, and ubiquitous color photographs and illustrations. Overall, this renders the Concise History more visually appealing, while Faiths Across Time is more informative and more comprehensive.

Faiths Across Time also comes across as more objective and more culturally sensitive than the Concise History. For example, a one-column essay about Greek Religion in the Concise History focuses on the hedonistic qualities of the Olympian deities and on the philosophers’ negative reception of that tradition, without discussing how the Olympian religion might have been an expression of the human condition or held any meaning for its adherents. It comes across as implicitly anti-polytheistic. By comparison, Faiths Across Time begins a brief essay about monotheism in the ancient world by acknowledging how uncommon it was in ancient times before proceeding to mention Akhenaten and then the Hebrews. An essay about the Mystery Religions in Faiths Across Time is equally objective in approaching these ancient, polytheistic traditions. To be fair, the Concise History is also more objective with large, contemporary traditions such as Islam.

All four volumes of Faiths Across Time contain a comprehensive index to the entire work, and page numbers are continuous through the four volumes. This makes the work rather accessible.

The real value of this work is in its ability to fit religious events and developments into the broader chronological and geographic context of religious history. One could imagine a researcher turning to this work in order to compare events from the Mayan civilization with those from the Egypt or to compare events in the development of Islam with events in eastern Christianity. It is doubtful that a researcher studying a single tradition would turn to this work first in order to gain an introduction, but the work might be useful to such a person in establishing context. It is also an interesting work to browse. Faiths Across Time: 5,000 Years of Religious History is appropriate for the reference shelves of academic libraries supporting undergraduate programs. It is also appropriate for secondary school libraries where an objective approach to comparative religious history would be valued.