Karen Armstrong, a comparative religion specialist is the author of numerous books on religion, including The Case for God, A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and Fields of Blood, as well as a memoir, The Spiral Staircase.
Her work has been translated into 45 languages. In 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and began working with TED on the Charter for Compassion, created online by the public, crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. It was launched globally in the fall of 2009. Also in 2008, she was awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal. In 2013, she received the British Academy’s inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Trans cultural Understanding.
Books in order of publication:
Through the Narrow Gate. London: Pan Books. 1982.
Beginning the World. London: Pan Books. 1983.
The First Christian: Saint Paul’s Impact on Christianity. London: Pan Books. 1983.
Tongues of Fire: An Anthology of Religious and Poetic Experience. Editor. Harmondsworth, England: Viking Press. 1985.
The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity’s Creation of the Sex War in the West. London: Pan Books. 1986.
Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today’s World. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. 1988.
Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1991.
The English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century. 1991.
The End of Silence: Women and the Priesthood. 1993.
A History of God. Alfred A. Knopf. 1993.
Visions of God : Four Medieval Mystics and Their Writings. 1994.
In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. 1996.
Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. HarperCollins. 1996.
Islam: A Short History. Modern Library Chronicles. 2000.
The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Knopf/HarperCollins. 2000.
Faith After 11 September. 2002.
Buddha. Penguin. 2004.
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out Of Darkness. Alfred A. Knopf. 2004.
A Short History of Myth. Canongate Books. 2005.
Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time. HarperCollins. 2006
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. 2006.
The Bible: A Biography. Grove Press. 2007.
The Case for God. Vintage. 2009.
Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. 2010.
A Letter to Pakistan. Oxford University Press. 2011.
Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. Bodley Head. 2014.
St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate. New Harvest. 2015.
The Lost Art of Scripture. Bodley Head. 2019.
Religion. Vintage. 2019.
Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World. Knopf. 2022.
Oak Lawn Library Friends 