SO excited about this one. Taking all my willpower not to skip homework and just read it right now...
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Bother, I wanted to like this book so much. The Question of God wasn't bad, but it lacked. The author is immensely repetitive and he states the same facts and quotes in almost every chapter. While this might work for a book designed to function more as a reference, it made a chronological reading boring.
The author also spoon-feeds the reader most of his conclusions. There is very little intellectual dialogue despite being a book contrasting new very different thinkers. What contrast there is comes from quotes from the two men and frequent, repetitive attempts on the author's part to remind the reader there is a 'great difference' between the two.
Even more jarring is the author's own voice laced throughout the book. At random chapters, he references his own experiences or the conversion of students he studied. With all respect to Dr. Nicholi, I didn't read this book for him and I could care less about what he thinks. Unfortunately, what he thinks is on every page. His bias becomes more evident with every chapter.
Of course, I agree with that bias and so I understood the conclusions he draws but I don't think he illuminates enough why you draw them. That is an entirely larger, more complex discussion. It is certainly one worth having but this book cannot do it justice and to focus so primarily on that is to create more confusion than clarity.
The Question of God was hardly a waste. I am glad I read it. It was intriguing to see the two men contrasted and I enjoyed reading both their writings. There certainly is a dialogue between them. The problem, however, is that this book doesn't dialogue so much as repeat quotes and biographical facts, hype up a contrast that doesn't need to be hyped, and finally draw conclusions about the world that (while I agree with), hardly emphasize the 'lack of bias' promised in the Prologue.
To conclude, I imagine this makes a wonderful class. This is a lecture series without the dialogue of students. You can lead a student to a conclusion over a semester. It is much harder to give that level of weight to a book finished over a few days (or in my case, one evening.)