One of his main points is that peoples around the world, for whatever reason, seemed to be instinctually drawn toward the worship of something - an object, animal, human or unseen god or goddess. In this first volume he explores various cultures and their beliefs - the Mayas, Greeks, Iranians, neolithic man, Egypt, other Middle East groups...a dazzling array of cultures and societies. As the imagination grew, so did belief in an unseen world.

Of particular interest is the section on ancient Israeli beliefs and the origins of Yahweh. The chapters on religion in Greece were notable for their abundant detail. Even in the most isolated areas, the same rites and beliefs emerged - the idea of sacrifice, the belief in another life, the battle of good vs evil, the idea of holy representatives and eventually the thought of eternal life.

The greatness of this history is that Eliade actually writes about almost everything, ever. So these three volumes are a solid introduction to the totality of religion. Since all of us lack familiarity with something, we can all fill in some significant gaps in our knowledge with these books.

But unfortunately, it's not the best introduction to any specific thing that it covers. If you already know about some subject, then Eliade's coverage of it proves completely useless and superficial. It seems that Eliade's purpose was to show how every important religious phenomenon in history relates to his pet theories. In his defense, perhaps this is simply inevitable when one person tries to write about all of religion in 1000 pages. Certainly, there is nothing else like this out there because the task is enormous. If nothing else, the fact that Eliade researched and wrote this is amazing.