The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah

ISBN: 9780385721240
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Anchor/Random House

BOOK DESCRIPTION
From Karen Armstrong, the bestselling author of A History of God and The Spiral Staircase, comes this extraordinary investigation of a critical moment in the evolution of religious thought.

In the ninth century BCE, events in four regions of the civilized world led to the rise of religious traditions that have endured to the present day—the development of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Armstrong, one of our most prominent religious scholars, examines how these traditions began in response to the violence of their time. Studying figures as diverse as the Buddha and Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah, Armstrong reveals how these still enduring philosophies can help address our contemporary problems.

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The Case for God

ISBN: 9781847920355
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Random House

An essential book for our times: Karen Armstrong answers bestselling atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and argues that faith still has a fundamental role in the modern world.

BOOK DESCRIPTION
The enormous popularity of books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and others shows that despite the religious revival that is under way in many parts of the world, there is widespread confusion about the nature of religious truth. For the first time in history, a significantly large number of people want nothing to do with God. In the past people went to great lengths to experience a sacred reality that they called God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao; indeed religion could be said to be the distinguishing characteristic of homo sapiens. But now militant atheists preach a gospel of godlessness with the zeal of Christian missionaries in the age of faith and find an eager audience. What has happened?
Karen Armstrong argues that historically atheism has rarely been a denial of the sacred itself but has nearly always rejected a particular conception of God. During the modern period, the Christians of the West developed a theology that was radically different from that of the pre-modern age. Tracing the history of faith from the Palaeolithic Age to the present, Armstrong shows that until recently there was no warfare between science and religion. But science has changed the conversation. The meaning of words such as belief, faith, and mystery has been entirely altered, so that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God - and, indeed, reason itself - in a way that our ancestors would have found astonishing.
Why has the modern God become incredible? Has God a future in this age of aggressive scientific rationalism? Karen Armstrong suggests that if we draw creatively on the insights of the past, we can build a faith that speaks to the needs of our troubled and dangerously polarized world.

REVIEWS
"The best sort of popularizing: there is no sacrifice of integrity and no dumbing down" ...Edward Norman, Literary Review
"A remarkable history... fascinating and highly readable... profoundly relevant" ...Julie Wheelwright, Independent
"This book deserves nothing but praise" ...Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
"A subtle and funny memoir" ...Sunday Telegraph
"An exceptionally impressive autobiography. Karen Armstrong's account of her spiralling journey provokes thought and inspires respect" ...Daily Telegraph

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A History of God

ISBN: 9780099273677
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Random House

BOOK DESCRIPTION
The idea of a single devine being – God, Yahweh, Allah – has existed for over 4,000 years. But the history of God is also the history of human struggle. While Judaism, Islam and Christianity proclaim the goodness of God, organised religion has too often been the catalyst for violence and ineradicable prejudice. In this fascinating, extensive and original account of the evolution of belief, Karen Armstrong examines Western socitety's unerring fidelity to this idea of One God and the man conflicting convictions it engenders. A controversial, extraordinary story of worship and war, A HISTORY OF GOD confronts the most fundamental fact – or fiction – of our lives.

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The Battle for God

ISBN: 9780006383482
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Harper Collins

BOOK DESCRIPTION
Britain's greatest religious historian chronicles the rise and rise of fundamentalism.
One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious extremism, and the need to understand it has never been greater. Focusing in detail on Protestant fundamentalism in the United States, Jewish fundamentalism from sixteenth century Spain onwards and Muslim fundamentalism over the last four hundred years, Armstrong examines the patterns that underlie fundamentalism. These evolve from the clash between the conservative pre-modern mind that is governed by a love of myth, and the progressive rational society that relishes change.

Fundamentalists view the contemporary world with horror, rejecting its claims to truth, and a state of war now exists over the future of our culture. They are not terrorists, rather, they are innovative, existing in a symbiotic relationship with an aggressive modernity, each urging the other on to greater excess. The Battle for God is original in its thesis and in its understanding; as a history of religious ideas it is fascinating, and as an explanation of one of the most destabilising forces at large in the world today it is extraordinary.

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A History of Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths

ISBN: 9780002558518
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Harper Collins

BOOK DESCRIPTION
Jerusalem has probably cast more of a spell over the human imagination than any other city in the world. Held by the faithful to contain the mountain upon which Abraham offered up Isaac, the site of the Hebrew Temple, the hill of Christ's crucifixion, the tomb of the Virgin Mary and the rock from which the prophet Muhammed ascended to heaven, the city has been celebrated and revered for centuries by Jews, Christians and Muslims. Karen Armstrong uncovers each layer of the history of this great palimpsest of a city. Her book is a history of the city Armstrong's words, "an attempt to find out what Jews, Christians and Muslims have meant when they say the city is 'holy' to them, and point out some of the implications of Jerusalem's sanctity in each tradition."

REVIEWS
"SPLENDID ... Eminently sane and patient ... Essential reading for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike." ...The Washington Post
"THE BEST SERIOUS, ACCESSIBLE HISTORY OF THE MOST SPIRITUALLY IMPORTANT CITY IN THE WORLD." ...The Baltimore Sun
"A WORK OF IMPRESSIVE SWEEP AND GRANDEUR." ...Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Muhammad: Prophet For Our Time

ISBN: 9780007232482
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Harper Collins

BOOK DESCRIPTION
Karen Armstrong has become one of our most important and relevant commentators on religious world affairs today, consistently providing a scholarly but accessible approach to humanity's relationships with God and religion.

To date, there have been very few books written on the Islamic prophet of the religion that is followed by over the 1.2 billion Muslims who make up a fifth of the world's population.

Muhammad's staggering achievements as a human being quite simply altered the course of history as we know it and continue to this day to inspire humanity.

Muslims claim that in 650 AD, at the age of forty, Muhammad had a visitation from the Angel Gabriel telling him that he had been chosen to learn, recite and spread the words of God to man in verses that would later make up the Qu'ran. He slowly developed into a prophet, preaching monotheism to the masses.

He was initially mocked and rejected by many and risked numerous assassination attempts throughout his life. At a critical time, he also made the revolutionary decision to break all ties with his Muslim tribe thereby proclaiming that the bonds of Islam took precedence over anything else. The Islamic empire thus expanded into Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, North Africa and Spain.

Karen Armstrong has written a fascinating account of this figure whose life and influence has determined the course of the spiritual life of humankind.

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The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness A Memoir

ISBN: 9780007122295
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Harper Collins

BOOK DESCRIPTION
After seven years in a convent, which she left, dismayed by its restrictions, an experience recounted in Through the Narrow Gate, Karen Armstrong struggled to establish herself in a new way of life, and became entrapped in a downwards spiral, haunted by despair, anorexia and suicidal feelings.

Despite her departure from the convent she remained within the Catholic Church until the God she believed in 'died on me', and she entered a 'wild and Godless period of crazy parties and numerous lovers'. Her attempts to reach happiness and carve out a career failed repeatedly, in spectacular fashion. She began writing her bestseller A History of God in a spirit of scepticism, but through studying other religious traditions she found a very different kind of faith which drew from Christianity, Judaism and Islam and, eventually, spiritual and personal calm.

In her own words, her 'story is a graphic illustration — almost an allegory — of a widespread dilemma. It is emblematic of a more general flight from institutional religion and a groping towards a form of faith that has not yet been fully articulated but which is nevertheless in the process of declaring itself.' Her lifelong inability to pray and to conform to traditional structures of worship is shared by the many who are leaving the established churches but who desire intensely a spiritual aspect to their lives.

The Spiral Staircase grapples with the issue of how we can be religious in the contemporary world, and the place and possibility of belief in the twenty-first century.

Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World

ISBN: 9780385721400
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Anchor/Random House

BOOK DESCRIPTION
Karen Armstrong, bestselling author of A History of God, skillfully narrates this history of the Crusades with a view toward their profound and continuing influence.

In 1095 Pope Urban II summoned Christian warriors to take up the cross and reconquer the Holy Land. Thus began the holy wars that would focus the power of Europe against a common enemy and become the stuff of romantic legend. In reality the Crusades were a series of rabidly savage conflicts in the name of piety. And, as Karen Armstrong demonstrates in this fascinating book, their legacy of religious violence continues today in the Middle East, where the age-old conflict of Christians, Jews, and Muslims persists.

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Buddha

ISBN: 9780753813409
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Penguin Books

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Books on Buddhism may overflow the shelves, but the life story of the Buddha himself has remained obscure despite over 2,500 years of influence on millions of people around the world. In an attempt to rectify this, and to make the Buddha and Buddhism accessible to Westerners, the beloved scholar and author of such sweeping religious studies as A History of God has written a readable, sophisticated, and somewhat unconventional biography of one of the most influential people of all time. Buddha himself fought against the cult of personality, and the Buddhist scriptures were faithful, giving few details of his life and personality. Karen Armstrong mines these early scriptures, as well as later biographies, then fleshes the story out with an explanation of the cultural landscape of the 6th century B.C., creating a deft blend of biography, history, philosophy, and mythology.

Islam: A Short History

ISBN: 1842125834
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Anchor/Random House

BOOK DESCRIPTION
No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular imagination as an extreme faith that promotes terrorism, authoritarian government, female oppression, and civil war. In a vital revision of this narrow view of Islam and a distillation of years of thinking and writing about the subject, Karen Armstrong's short history demonstrates that the world's fastest-growing faith is a much more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest.

NOTE: Delivery on this book could be 4-6 weeks.

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Visions of God: Four Medieval Mystics and their Writings

ISBN: 9780553351996
Author(s): Karen Armstrong Publisher: Bantam/Random House

BOOK DESCRIPTION
The mystics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, writes Karen Armstrong, like "the astronauts of our own day. They broke into a new religion, blazed a new trail to God and to the depths of the self, a trail far from the beaten pilgrimage paths of Chaucer and Langland." Mysticism is a spiritual mystery shared in some form by all faiths; it has a supernatural quality that extends beyond the given boundaries of religious creed and may be experienced by any lay person. The thrilling intensity of a mystical experience, as represented in this volume by the writings of four mystics of the Middle Ages, can inspire other spiritual seekers with its insight into the limitless wonder of both human and divine experience. Dissatisfied by the strictures of dogma and a religion that failed to quench the human thirst for knowledge of a mystical order, these four mystics—Richard Rolle of Hampole, Walter Hilton, Dame Julian of Norwich, and the unknown author of The Cloud Of Unknowing—communicate an intense and passionate experience of faith rare in any time. Because of their unique beliefs and spiritual strength, their knowledge and writings have proved timeless, and in this beautiful volume show contemporary seekers important new insights into the nature of divine love.