You have little interesting to say in your review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (London: Allen Lane, 2009) and Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God: What Religion Really Means (New York: Knopf, 2009) except that both authors are loaded with baggage (“The Greatest Story, or the Trickiest,” September 19, 2009). He is a vicar’s son who was ordained as a deacon but declined to become a priest in protest of the church’s homophobia. An Oxford don, he has been active in the gay Christian lobby. An ex-nun, she is on a rebound from old-time Christianity. A self-styled ambassador of religion, she is battling with atheism. Phew. In the bargain, neither book deals properly with history of Christianity, which you advertise in red letters above the review’s title. Thus one is relieved to read your concluding sentence: “Perhaps one day an interesting history of Christianity will be written by somebody who is neither a Christian nor an ex-Christian.” Perhaps, but your review will forever remain a mystery.