Examines the origins of the religious traditions of the world during the ninth century B.C.E. in four distinct regions--Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rational...

This erudite and thought-provoking book is an excellent introduction to three major religious faiths--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--and their differing views of God, as well as the way these views have shaped the world. Karen Arms...

Karen Armstrong spent seven years in a convent (which she described in a previous memoir) and, when she left, was at a loss as to what to do with her life. In THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, she writes about her difficulties, as she first picke...

Armstrong succeeds - brilliantly - in placing fundamentalist movements in a historical context, showing how each is both a product of its times and typical of recurring trends....Armstrong, with her astonishing depth of knowledge and ...

The author of The Battle for God and other works on religion focuses her attention on the Buddha, retracing his life from prince to savior of humankind, in a philosophical portrait that offers an illuminating look at how his life and ...

A nuanced exploration of the part religion plays in human life, past and present, from one of the foremost commentators on religion at work today.Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great length...

As the single work at the heart of Christianity, the world's largest organized religion, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. In this seminal account, acclaimed historian Armstrong discusses...

With a new postscriptIn these times of rising geopolitical chaos, the need for mutual understanding between cultures has never been more urgent. Religious differences are seen as fuel for violence and warfare. In these pages, one of o...

A nuanced exploration of the part that religion plays in human life, drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. Moving from the Paleolithic age to the pres...

From one of the world's leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling A History of God, The Battle for God and The Spiral Staircase, comes a major new work: a chronicle of one of the most important int...

In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and ...

Through the Narrow Gate is Karen Armstrong's intimate memoir of life inside a Catholic convent. With refreshing honesty and clarity, the book takes readers on a revelatory adventure that begins with Armstrong's decision in the course ...

One of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world—author of such acclaimed books as A History of God, Islam, and Buddha—now gives us an impassioned and practical book that can help us make the world a m...

Muhammad was born in 570 CE, and over the following sixty years built a thriving spiritual community, laying the foundations of a religion that changed the course of world history. There is more historical data on his life than on tha...

From one of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world, a profound exploration of the spiritual power of nature—and an urgent call to reclaim that power in everyday life. "Much has been writte...

In this seminal account, acclaimed historian Karen Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, and life of historys most powerful book---the Bible. This is a brilliant, captivating book, crucial in an age of declining faith and ris...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK\r\n\r\nONE OF THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR\'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR\r\n\r\nThe significance of scripture may not be immediately obvious in our secular world, but its misunderstanding is perhaps the root...