Covering 2000 years of church history in one 500-page volume is no small feat, but Bruce L. Shelley does a decent job. I learned a lot. The book is pretty clearly from an evangelical American perspective, but Shelley is quite positive about the Catholic church. The Eastern church is pretty much ignored after the split, so this is mainly a history of the Western church. Shelley does at least remember to mention the Eastern church, and tries to explain how different it is from both the Roman Catholic church and Protestantism.