The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to the History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture Book

It was a fairly dry read, mostly history. My improssion is the Orthodox church is those who refused to kowtow to the bishop of Rome. Were based in Constantinople for a while, spread to Slavic speaking areas. The Muslims suppressed them, and later the Catholic crusaders destroyed their churches.
Various monarchs oppressed them and Soviet Union brought them to brink of extinction.
There has been a bit of revival, though many issues. The author lists various rules and restrictions, seems fairly strict. However one good thing I can say is that nowhere does it mention the Orthodox church committing genocide in the way that Catholic and Protestant churches have support (crusades, inquisition, witch burning etc), I don't know if this is a mere oversight of the author, but if true is a good thing. It could also be cause the author was just trying to show the "good side" of the Orthodox Church so hard to say for sure.
He did mention over a hundred thousand clergymen were killed by the Soviet Union, my great grand father numbers among them.
Best part was the few little gems on spirituality and love, but those were few and far in between. Like it is good to hear there are several meditation practices.