"Tracing the Way: is the product of a lifetime of experience. In researching and compiling this book Hans Kung has travelled to every corner of the globe in search of God in his many guises. Kung casts an analytical eye over the major world religions and offers a view of the present and what that means when measured against the past. Kung surveys, as succinctly as possible, the historical stages of each world religion and analyses their major paradigms and paradigm shifts. For the present can be understood only in the light of constellations from the past which have persisted side by side with each other. "Tracing the Way" attempts to understand the religions, in both text and pictures, as objectively as possible and discusses the social, political and historical contexts of the many forms of belief that exist today.