One of Los Angeles Times Book Review's Twenty Best Books for 2003 "The best introduction to the ideas of religious freedom can be found in Zagorin's volume... [It] is never dull and often exciting."
James Q. Wilson, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Ever since the Enlightenment, most Western governments have accepted religious toleration. In this superb intellectual history, noted early modern ... Read morehistorian Zagorin traces the evolution of this concept from the first through the18th centuries; a brief conclusion carries the story to the present... A well-written tract for our times."
Choice "Americans who regard Islamic fundamentalists as peculiarly intolerant have much to learn from distinguished historian Zagorin... A book to dispel complacency about a priceless liberty."
Booklist (starred review) "A deeply scholarly but ultimately engaging argument for the origins of religious toleration in Western culture since the Enlightenment. Combining elements of theology, philosophy, history, and politics, this intellectual history is less focused on thinkers than on a singular ideal: how the concept of religious toleration and freedom was born."
Library Journal "Zagorin's exposition of the ideas on toleration emerging in the west in the early modern period is richly illuminating."
Kimberly A. Bresler, Theology Today "This is an altogether excellent, readable, and comprehensive survey of the development of "Christian" intolerance in the post-Constantinian world and the gradual emancipation from the evil in the modern period."
Robert L. Perkins, Journal of Church and State "Perez Zagorin, a scholar who specializes in the history of ideas, traces the checkered progress of permitting diversity of belief in his book... At the end of the book, Dr. Zagorin expresses the hope that religious freedom may extend to the parts of the Islamic world and the remaining communist countries where it doesn't exist today."
Darrell Turner, National Catholic Reporter Show Less