“What Happened at Vatican II” by John O’Malley is an excellent and interesting book I can recommend to any general reader.  While it details in strong and readable narrative, the people and activities of a specific religious group, the Catholic Church, anyone with an interest in human nature, world events, history, and faith will find this well-written book valuable.  O’Malley is a strong writer who never loses the reader in the complexities of the event, the people, and the ideas.  He also avoids grinding axes even with the incredible explosiveness of the ideas and personalities involved in Vatican II.

As a person trained in communication research, I was particularly interested and fascinated in reading about the procedures and networks of communication that drove Vatican II.  The Catholic Church is the oldest human institution on earth and is layered with hundreds of years of ritual, procedure, canon law, and tradition.  Yet within what one might easily misperceive as an ossified organization, the play of human nature and the role of communication were vital to the outcome of Vatican II.  O’Malley draws a compelling case study of how people act in a complex decision making event even with such an old, established hierarchy.

For people of any faith or ethical tradition, this book would also be valuable source for reflection upon your own theology, ethics, and values.  O’Malley provides excellent descriptions of the ideas and policies the Catholic leadership considered during Vatican II (plus you can visit the Vatican website to read the complete documents if you are that interested - I found it useful to read O’Malley’s descriptions with my computer on a good search engine).  Even if you are not a strong Catholic, you can still appreciate the questions, arguments, and decisions made at Vatican II and wonder upon them for your own growth.

This is a history book and not a polemic.  O’Malley does not preach from this pulpit, but rather provides a clear, compelling, interesting, and useful look of the people in that pulpit.  I suspect that an open minded skeptic or nihilist would find this book interesting unless you think the argument begins and ends with someone like Bill Maher and his current movie, Religulous.  You might prefer a different aisle.