A Cloud of Witnesses is an extremely brief and simple overview of ten great Christian thinkers. The chapters, 11 in all (Martin Luther earned 2 chapters) are less biographies of thinkers and more biographies of thoughts. This book won't give you and intimate feel of the struggles of Saint Augustine (for that read his confessions).

You won't come away knowing Anselm as a person but you will come away knowing a tiny bit about his thoughts and contributions to Christianity. This lack of personality hinders the development of thought, it doesn't give the reader a sense where the thinkers thoughts came from. Augustine's struggles of the flesh aren't revealed in their depth so the reasons for the development of his thoughts is missing.

The book has a unique choice of characters, McGrath makes an unorthodox, yet merited, choice to place Zwingli along side his contemporaries (Luther and Calvin). He also includes Jonathan Edwards the most controversial of the early American preachers. He choses to end with the modern choice of C.S. Lewis, another merited choice that would have been excluded from most lists of Ten Great Christian Thinkers. To McGrath's credit he only claims to be writing about ten great thinkers not the ten greatest. His choices bring to like a unusual perspective and history for modern Christian Thought.

Don't read this book if you are know about these great men, you won't learn much. Do read this book if you want to know ten great Christian thinkers who you may not know. ( )