Reddit reviews A History of the Jewish People

• Jews, God, and History would actually be a good pairing for your book now - while Johnson is more Zionist and philosemitic, Dimont takes a stance similar to Spinoza, which - while still of course being 'pro-Jew,' is more cultural in the context of the world than religious as the 'Chosen People.'
  
• Jewish Literacy is what you are guaranteed to find on every single rabbi's shelf on Earth. Telushkin is an excellent writer, and is concise in his explanations of why we are the way we are and why we do what we do. It's less about a strict history than explaining all those things, but it's still valuable if you want to really get to your roots.
  
• History of the Jewish People - I read this in college. More of a text for students, but valuable all the same.
  
• Josephus is a historical text by one of the greatest historians from the turn of the first millennium. If you choose to get this, I highly recommend having Wikipedia open as you read it.

I've discussed Azlan's work many times. He is not an especially capable academic. Regarding Zealot, this is a quote from one of my colleagues that offers a succinct summary of what is wrong with the book from a Jewish/Religious studies perspective:

>...the book is basically an undergraduate paper. If I taught a BA seminar on Second Temple Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (or something along those lines) and got chapters from this book as term paper submissions, I'd be pleased with the effort, and somewhat disappointed with the content. There is real (sometimes quite basic) failure to analyze critically primary and secondary texts (for example, his research on the ca. 70 CE state of the Galilee is sorely lacking)....

Here is also an intelligent review from Prof. Allan Nadler who highlights similar issues at length.

As far as books on Judaism go, there are several options that grant a survey of Jewish history and Judaism. Max Diamont's Jews, God and History and Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews are very readable books, but neither are historians, with the latter being somewhat better than the former as he is not quite so clouded by his own associations.

The essential text that is worth looking at is H.H. Ben Sasson's A History of the Jewish People which covers the entire history of the Jews from a number of well known academics.

As for your other comments regarding wanting to know why Jews believe what they do, I second the recommendation of This is My God by Herman Wouk as he gives across the cultural sense of Judaism better than many (he is a writer, not a historian and his book has some mistakes, but they are minor and don't overshadow the message).