Michael Baigent,Richard Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

This book does a great job giving a new perspective of who Jesus was or could have been. If you are open minded - it gives you a better idea of what Christianity is and how the current bible came to be. The book does not claim the hypothesis to be absolute fact, it just gives facts to support the authors hypothesis of Jesus and his family.

Finally it gives great background info on the story line for 'Da Vinci Code'The first half of the book is very slow due to all the factual information... if you can get through it the second half makes it worth it.

Michael Baigent is not a very rigorous historian, if he can be called that. If you intend to buy The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, consider that there are better, and more thoroughly-researched histories of Christianity that were authored by non-Christian researchers, e.g. Robin Lane Fox and Michael Grant.

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is great for those who would like to find out more about the origins of Christianity, although in parts this book seems a little far-fetched and there are a lot of presumptions and maybes to get to the final conclusion. I felt that the author had researched the book well in most areas and is well worth reading.