I found this book to be absolutely amazing. I really did. I will however spend most of my time expressing my complaints.
1.) There are minimal footnotes and cited sources. Stauffer is making some pretty big claims, and I was never quite sure where he was getting his data. I actually emailed Dr. Paul Maier, (an expert on Ancient Greco-Roman history) and asked him if Stauffer was a reliable source. Dr. Maier gave him a thumbs up.
2.) This book spends an exorbitant amount of time talking about depictions on coins and how coins were a form of propaganda in those days. With all the coins he mentions you never see any examples. There are only two pictures of coins in the entire book and they don't really help you very much. If he had a picture for every coin he referenced so you could see what he was talking about, that would be great.
3.) His universalist theology affected his writing minimally, this was nice.
All in all, it was a fantastic book.
