The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965
Random House
527 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345376718
Summary
With its first great victory in the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the Civil Rights movement gained the powerful momentum it needed to sweep forward into its crucial decade, the 1960s. As voices of protest and change rose above the din of history and false promises, one sounded more urgently, more passionately than the rest.
Malcolm X—once called the most dangerous man in America—challenged the world to listen and learn the truth as he experienced it. And his enduring message is as relevant today as when he first delivered it.
In his autobiography's searing pages, Malcolm X the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement to veteran writer and journalist Alex Haley. In a unique collaboration, Alex Haley worked with Malcolm X for nearly two years, interviewing, listening to, and understanding the most controversial leader of his time.
Raised in Lansing, Michigan, Malcolm Little's road to world fame was as astonishing as it was unpredictable. After drifting from childhood poverty to petty crime, Malcolm found himself in jail. It was there that he came into contact with the teachings of a little-known Black Muslim leader named Elijah Muhammed. The newly renamed Malcolm X devoted himself body and soul to the teachings of Elijah Muhammed and the world of Islam, and became the Nation's foremost spokesman.
When his own conscience forced him to break with Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity, to reach African Americans across the country with an inspiring message of pride, power, and self-determination. The Autobiography of Malcolm X defines American culture and the African-American struggle for social and economic equality that has now become a battle for survival. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1925
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Death—February 21, 1965
• Where—New York, New York
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was an African-American Muslim minister and a human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans.
To his detractors he was a threat to social order, preaching racism and violence. Nonetheless, despite the criticism, he has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.
Early years
Malcolm X was effectively orphaned early in life. His father was killed when he was six and his mother was placed in a mental hospital when he was thirteen, after which he lived in a series of foster homes.
In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for larceny and breaking and entering. While in prison he became a member of the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952 quickly rose to become one of its leaders.
Nation of Islam
For a dozen years he was the public face of the controversial group; in keeping with the Nation's teachings he espoused black supremacy, advocated the separation of black and white Americans and scoffed at the civil rights movement's emphasis on integration.
By March 1964, Malcolm X had grown disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its leader Elijah Muhammad. He ultimately repudiated the Nation and its teachings and embraced Sunni Islam. After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, he returned to the United States to found Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
While continuing to emphasize Pan-Africanism, black self-determination, and black self-defense, he disavowed racism, saying, "I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then... pointed in a certain direction and told to march."]
Death
In February 1965, shortly after repudiating the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three of its members. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published shortly after his death, is considered one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/9/2012.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 11, 1921
• Raised—Ithaca, New York, USA
• Death—February 10, 1992
• Where—Seattle, Washington
• Awards—Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; Pulitzer Prize
Alex Haley was an American writer. He is best known as the author of the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. It was adapted by ABC as a TV mini-series of the same name and aired in 1977 to a record-breaking 130 million viewers. It had great influence on awareness in the United States of African-American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history.
Haley had previously written The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), a collaboration through numerous lengthy interviews with the subject, a major African-American leader.
He was working on a second family history novel at his death. Haley had requested that David Stevens, a screenwriter, complete it; the book was published as Alex Haley's Queen. It was adapted as a film of the same name released in 1993.
Early life
Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, on August 11, 1921, and was the oldest of three brothers and a sister. Haley lived with his family in Henning, Tennessee, before returning to Ithaca with his family when he was five years old. Haley's father was Simon Haley, a professor of agriculture at Alabama A&M University, and his mother was Bertha George Haley (nee Palmer) who was from Henning. The younger Haley always spoke proudly of his father and the obstacles of racism he had overcome.
Like his father, Alex Haley was enrolled at age 15 in Alcorn State University, a historically black college, and, a year later, enrolled at Elizabeth City State College, also historically black, in North Carolina. The following year he returned to his father and stepmother to tell them he had withdrawn from college.
His father felt that Alex needed discipline and growth, and convinced him to enlist in the military when he turned 18. On May 24, 1939, Haley began what became a 20-year career with the United States Coast Guard.
US Coast Guard
Haley enlisted as a mess attendant. Later he was promoted to the rate of petty officer third-class in the rating of steward, one of the few ratings open to African Americans at that time. It was during his service in the Pacific theater of operations that Haley taught himself the craft of writing stories. During his enlistment he was often paid by other sailors to write love letters to their girlfriends. He said that the greatest enemy he and his crew faced during their long voyages was not the Japanese forces but rather boredom.
After World War II, Haley petitioned the U.S. Coast Guard to allow him to transfer into the field of journalism. By 1949 he had become a petty officer first class in the rating of journalist. He later advanced to chief petty officer and held this grade until his retirement from the Coast Guard in 1959. He was the first Chief Journalist in the Coast Guard, the rating having been expressly created for him in recognition of his literary ability.
Haley's awards and decorations from the Coast Guard include the Coast Guard Good Conduct Medal (with 1 silver and 1 bronze service star), American Defense Service Medal (with "Sea" clasp), American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Korean Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, and the Coast Guard Expert Marksmanship Medal.[7] Additionally, he was awarded the War Service Medal by the Republic of Korea ten years after his death.
Literary career
After retiring from the U.S. Coast Guard, Haley began another phase of his journalism career. He eventually became a senior editor for Reader's Digest magazine.
Playboy magazine
Haley conducted the first interview for Playboy magazine. His interview with jazz musician Miles Davis appeared in the September 1962 issue. Haley elicited candid comments from Davis about his thoughts and feelings on racism. That interview set the tone for what became a significant feature of the magazine. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Playboy Interview with Haley was the longest he ever granted to any publication.
Throughout the 1960s, Haley was responsible for some of the magazine's most notable interviews, including one with George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party. He agreed to meet with Haley only after gaining assurance from the writer that he was not Jewish. Haley remained professional during the interview, although Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout it. (The interview was recreated in Roots: The Next Generations, with James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell.)
Haley also interviewed Muhammad Ali, who spoke about changing his name from Cassius Clay. Other interviews include Jack Ruby's defense attorney Melvin Belli, entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., football player Jim Brown, TV host Johnny Carson, and music producer Quincy Jones.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Published in 1965, The Autobiography of Malcolm Xwas Haley's first book. It describes the trajectory of Malcolm X's life from street criminal to national spokesman for the Nation of Islam to his conversion to Sunni Islam. It also outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. Haley wrote an epilogue to the book summarizing the end of Malcolm X's life, including his assassination in New York's Audubon Ballroom.
Haley ghostwrote the autobiography based on more than 50 in-depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and the February 1965 assassination. The two men had first met in 1960 when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for Reader's Digest. They met again when Haley interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy.
The first interviews for the autobiography frustrated Haley. Rather than discussing his own life, Malcolm X spoke about Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam; he became angry about Haley's reminders that the book was supposed to be about Malcolm X. After several meetings, Haley asked Malcolm X to tell him something about his mother. That question drew Malcolm X into recounting his life story.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been a consistent best-seller since its 1965 publication. The New York Times reported that six million copies of the book had sold by 1977. In 1998, Time magazine ranked the book as one of the 10 most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.
In 1966, Haley received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Roots
In 1976, Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel based on his family's history, going back to slavery days. It started with the story of Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in the Gambia in 1767 and transported to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave.
Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and his work on the novel involved ten years of research, intercontinental travel and writing. He went to the village of Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and which had continued, and listened to a tribal historian (griot) tell the story of Kinte's capture. Haley also traced the records of the ship, The Lord Ligonier, which he said carried his ancestor to the Americas.
Haley has stated that the most emotional moment of his life occurred in 1967 when he stood at the site in Annapolis, Maryland, where his ancestor had arrived from Africa in chains exactly 200 years before. A memorial depicting Haley reading a story to young children gathered at his feet has since been erected in the center of Annapolis.
Roots was eventually published in 37 languages. Haley won a special Pulitzer Prize for the work in 1977. The same year, Roots was adapted as a popular television miniseries of the same name by ABC. The serial reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers. Roots emphasized that African Americans have a long history and that not all of that history is necessarily lost, as many believed. Its popularity also sparked a greatly increased public interest in genealogy.
In 1979, ABC aired the sequel miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations, which continued the story of Kunta Kinte's descendants. It concluded with Haley's travel to Juffure. Haley was portrayed at different ages by Kristoff St. John, The Jeffersons actor Damon Evans, and Tony Award winner James Earl Jones.
Haley was briefly a "writer in residence" at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he began work on Roots. He enjoyed spending time at The Savoy, a local bistro in nearby Rome, where he would sometimes pass the time listening to the piano player. Today, there is a special table in honor of Haley, with a painting of Haley writing Roots on a yellow legal tablet
Later life and death
In the late 1970s, Haley began working on a second historical novel based on another branch of his family, traced through his grandmother Queen, the daughter of a black slave woman and her white master. Unable to finish the novel before his death, he had requested that David Stevens complete it. Published as Alex Haley's Queen, it was subsequently adapted as a movie of the same name in 1993.
Late in his life, Haley had acquired a small farm in Norris, Tennessee, adjacent to the Museum of Appalachia, intending to live there. After his death, the property was sold to the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) and is now known as The Alex Haley Farm. The CDF uses the property as a national training center and retreat site. An abandoned barn on the property was redesigned as a traditional cantilevered barn by architect Maya Lin and serves as a library for the CDF.
Haley died of a heart attack on February 10, 1992, in Seattle, Washington. He was 70 years old and is buried beside his childhood home in Henning, Tennessee. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/9/2012.)
Book Reviews
As this extraordinary autobiography shows, the source of Malcolm X's power was not alone in his intelligence, energy, electric personality or ability to grow and change, remarkable as these were. Its source was that he understood, perhaps more profoundly than any other Negro leader, the full, shocking extent of America's psychological destruction of its Negroes. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a brilliant, painful, important book.... The book raises many difficult questions.... But as a document for our time, its insights may be crucial; its relevance cannot be doubted.
Eliot Fremont-Smith - New York Times (November 5, 1965)
The prime document that has kept Malcolm’s story alive over the decades since his assassination in 1965 is The Autobiography of Malcolm X. That book has changed countless lives and made Malcolm a central influence on generations of black men who admire his force, his courage, his brilliance, and his way of merging the protean trickster and the bold intellectual activist and the inspiring preacher. But all autobiographies are, in part, lies. They rely on memory, which is notoriously fallible, and are shaped by self-image. They don’t really tell us who you are but whom you want the world to see you as. Did Malcolm X consciously lie in his autobiography? In some cases, yes — he wanted us to believe he was a bigger criminal than he actually was, so that his growth into a Nation of Islam figure would seem a much more dramatic change.
Toure - New York Times Book Review (June 17, 2011)
What makes this book extraordinary is the honesty with which Malcolm presents his life: Even as he regrets the mistakes he made as a young man, he brings his zoot-suited, swing-dancing, conk- haired Harlem youth to vivid life; even though he later turns away from the Nation of Islam, the strong faith he at one time in that sect's beliefs, a faith that redeemed him from prison and a life of crime, comes through. What made the man so extraordinary was his courageous insistence on finding the true path to his personal salvation and to the salvation of the people he loved, even when to stay on that path meant danger, alienation, and death
Sacred Fire
While critics still debate the role Alex Haley played in the writing of this 1965 book, its importance is irrefutable. With Haley’s assistance, Malcolm X described a world of broken promises, injustice, and hatred from which he wanted his race to escape. Many social reformers and militants have been inspired by this dramatic story.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Having read his autobiography, how do you personally feel about Malcolm X and his philosophies about the plight of African Americans. Be sensitive to the fact that there may be a number of members in your group who disagree with his approaches. Keep in mind, too, that many African Americans were opposed to Malcolm X's philosophy.
2. Discuss the role that Ella played in Malcolm's life. Describe her as a person. How was she a positive influence?
3. How did Malcolm get "off track" as a young person? How could he have handled his early years differently?
4. Discuss the role of the welfare workers in the Little family after the death of the father. Were they effective? What would have been some other alternatives that might have been more appropriate for the family?
5. How is hair an expression of one's self? Ask each student to write an essay that expresses why he or she has chosen to wear his or her hair in its current fashion.
6. Many of the people Malcolm X preached to about the Nation of Islam were turned off by the strict code of discipline. How is strict discipline an advantage in developing moral character and fortitude? How is strict discipline a disadvantage?
7. Explain how travel helps a person become more well rounded.
8. Why are many young people drawn into criminal lifestyles?
9. Compare and contrast Civil Rights as a movement in the 1960s and 1990s. Identify specific situations and events that have shaped civil rights in both time periods.
10. What are the characteristics of a leader? How would you rate Malcolm X as a leader and why?
11. Malcolm X was disappointed by the actions of Elijah Muhammad that were inconsistent with their Muslim principles. How would you have handled your disappointment with this situation?
12. Malcolm X, the father and husband, presented a number of challenges. What were they? What are the risks associated with being the spouse of a public figure? Is the risk the same or different when the public figure is a woman and the spouse is a man?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
After His Affair: Women Rising from the Ashes of Infidelity
Meryn G. Callandar, 2014
Akasha Publications
286 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780962588242
Summary
The discovery of your partner's cheating shatters the very core of your being. It's difficult to value and to allow our grieving, our anger, our rage, even our shame, the time and space to move us into a deeper life. We're supposed to just get over it, and move on.
Callander writes as a woman who has both betrayed and been betrayed. The voices of other women who have traveled this road join her in this unique and intimate exploration of the many faces of infidelity. Polls show that around 85% of people believe infidelity is wrong. More than 90% of married individuals do not approve of extramarital sex, and yet almost half admit to having had an affair. What drives this dichotomy between what we say we should do and what we do?
Author Bio
• Birth—February 2, 1952
• Where—Portland, Victoria, Australia
• Education—B.A., Monash University
• Currently—Byron Shire, New South Wales, Australia
Meryn Callander with born in Portland, Australia, in 1952. She graduated from Monash University, Melbourne, with degrees in both economics and social work. At 25, she quit her position working with children in crisis, feeling she was doing little but applying Band-Aids to gaping wounds. Searching for that elusive something more, she headed to Europe, and then the U.S.
It was there she met John W. Travis, M.D., known to many as the founding father of wellness. Their marriage and professional partnership spanned almost three decades, during which time they pushed the leading edges of wellness—going well beyond the popular focus on nutrition and physical fitness, into the mental and emotional, interpersonal and spiritual dimensions of wellbeing. They co-authored several pioneering books on wellness, and facilitated seminars and retreats in the U.S. and internationally.
In 1993, Meryn became a mother. After decades of working in adult wellness, she gleaned a whole new appreciation of how profoundly our early years impact the wellbeing of the adults we become. In 1999 she co-founded, and served for several years as president of, the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children. The Alliance emerged from a core group of interdisciplinary experts dedicated to supporting caregivers, professionals, and policymakers in practicing the art and science of nurturing children.
Why Dads Leave: Insights and Resources for When Partners Become Parents grew out of their journey through the early years of parenting. While John stayed well beyond the challenges of those early years, their experiences compelled her to identify the dynamics underlying the epidemic of men leaving their families—physically or emotionally—soon after the birth of a child, and how couples can grow together rather than apart. The book offers insights and practical ways of preventing the devastating impact of this dynamic.
Her latest book, After His Affair: Women Rising from the Ashes of Infidelity is a reflection of her concern at the escalating rates of infidelity and the devastation that is left in its wake. Meryn is a counselor, spiritual intuitive, and akashic reader. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Discussion Questions
1. What was the author¹s motivation for writing this book?
2. What kind of language does she use? Is it provocative or reassuring? Is it critical, inflammatory, accusatory? Is it passionate or compassionate?
3. Does the language help or undermine her motivation for writing?
4. What is one new fact of significance that you learned from reading this book?
5. Talk about specific passages or incidences that struck you as significant or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...? What was memorable?
6. Has the book in some way broadened your perspective or understanding of infidelity? If so, how?
7. Is there some other significant new perspective or understanding that you have learned from this book?
8. Did this book in some way offer you, hope and/or healing?
9. What are the implications for the future? Are there long- or short-term consequences to the issues raised in the book? Are they positive or negative...affirming or frightening? You may answer these questions for either our culture at large, or for you personally.
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence
Karen Armstrong, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307957047
Summary
From the renowned and best-selling author of A History of God, a sweeping exploration of religion and the history of human violence.
For the first time, religious self-identification is on the decline in American. Some analysts have cited as cause a post-9/11perception: that faith in general is a source of aggression, intolerance, and divisiveness—something bad for society. But how accurate is that view?
With deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong sets out to discover the truth about religion and violence in each of the world’s great traditions, taking us on an astonishing journey from prehistoric times to the present.
While many historians have looked at violence in connection with particular religious manifestations (jihad in Islam or Christianity’s Crusades), Armstrong looks at each faith—not only Christianity and Islam, but also Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Judaism—in its totality over time.
As she describes, each arose in an agrarian society with powerful landowners brutalizing peasants while also warring among themselves over land, then the only real source of wealth. In this world, religion was not the discrete and personal matter it would become for us but rather something that permeated all aspects of society. And so it was that agrarian aggression, and the warrior ethos it begot, became bound up with observances of the sacred.
In each tradition, however, a counterbalance to the warrior code also developed. Around sages, prophets, and mystics there grew up communities protesting the injustice and bloodshed endemic to agrarian society, the violence to which religion had become heir. And so by the time the great confessional faiths came of age, all understood themselves as ultimately devoted to peace, equality, and reconciliation, whatever the acts of violence perpetrated in their name.
Industrialization and modernity have ushered in an epoch of spectacular and unexampled violence, although, as Armstrong explains, relatively little of it can be ascribed directly to religion. Nevertheless, she shows us how and in what measure religions, in their relative maturity, came to absorb modern belligerence—and what hope there might be for peace among believers of different creeds in our time.
At a moment of rising geopolitical chaos, the imperative of mutual understanding between nations and faith communities has never been more urgent, the dangers of action based on misunderstanding never greater. Informed by Armstrong’s sweeping erudition and personal commitment to the promotion of compassion, Fields of Blood makes vividly clear that religion is not the problem. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 14,1944
• Where—Wildmoor, Worcestershire, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England
Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She would become disillusioned and leave the convent in 1969.
Armstrong first rose to prominence in 1993 with her book A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.
In February, 2008, she received a $100,000 TED Prize. She used that occasion to call for the creation of a Charter for Compassion, which was unveiled the following year.
Early life
Armstrong was born into a family of Irish ancestry who, after her birth, moved to Bromsgrove and later to Birmingham. In 1962, at the age of 18, she became a member of the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, a teaching congregation, in which she remained for seven years. Armstrong claims she suffered physical and psychological abuse in the convent, according to The Guardian newspaper:
But the sisters ran a cruel regime. Armstrong was required to mortify her flesh with whips and wear a spiked chain around her arm. When she spoke out of turn, she claims she was forced to sew at a treadle machine with no needle for a fortnight.
Once she had advanced from postulant and novice to professed nun, she enrolled in St Anne's College, Oxford, to study English. Armstrong left her order in 1969 while still a student at Oxford. After graduating with a Congratulatory First, she embarked on a DPhil on the poet Tennyson. According to Armstrong, she wrote her dissertation on a topic that had been approved by the university committee.
Nevertheless it was failed by her external examiner on the grounds that the topic had been unsuitable. Armstrong did not formally protest this verdict, nor did she embark upon a new topic but instead abandoned hope of an academic career. She reports that this period in her life was marked by ill-health stemming from her lifelong but, at that time, still undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy.
Career
In 1976, Armstrong took a job as teaching English at James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich while working on a memoir of her convent experiences. This was published in 1982 to excellent reviews as Through the Narrow Gate. That same year she embarked on a new career as an independent writer and broadcasting presenter.
In 1984, the British Channel Four commissioned her to write and present a TV documentary on the life of St. Paul, The First Christian, a project that involved traveling to the Holy Land to retrace the steps of the saint. Armstrong described this visit as a "breakthrough experience" that defied her prior assumptions and was the inspiration for virtually all her subsequent work.
In A History of God (1993), she traces the evolution of the three major monotheistic traditions from their beginnings in the Middle East up to the present day and also discusses Hinduism and Buddhism. As guiding "luminaries" in her approach, Armstrong acknowledges the late Canadian theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a Protestant minister, and the Jesuit father Bernard Lonergan. In 1996, she published Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths.
Armstrong's The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006) continues the themes covered in A History of God and examines the emergence and codification of the world's great religions during the so-called Axial age, identified by Karl Jaspers. As a result of her body of work, she has made considerable appearances on television, including appearances on Rageh Omaar's program, The Life of Muhammad. She was also an advisor for the award-winning, PBS-broadcast documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet (2002), produced by Unity Productions Foundation.
In 2007, Armstrong was invited by the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore to deliver the MUIS Lecture.
Armstrong is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars and laypeople that attempts to investigate the historical foundations of Christianity. She has written numerous articles for The Guardian and other publications. She was a key advisor on Bill Moyers' popular PBS series on religion, has addressed members of the United States Congress, and was one of three scholars to speak at the UN's first ever session on religion. She is a vice-president of the British Epilepsy Association, otherwise known as Epilepsy Action.
Armstrong, who has taught courses at Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical college and center for Jewish education located in north London, says she has been particularly inspired by the Jewish tradition's emphasis on practice as well as faith:
I say that religion isn't about believing things. It's about what you do. It's ethical alchemy. It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.
She maintains that religious fundamentalism is not just a response to, but is a product of contemporary culture and for this reason concludes that,
We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.
Awarded the $100,000 TED Prize in February 2008, Armstrong called for drawing up a Charter for Compassion, in the spirit of the Golden Rule, to identify shared moral priorities across religious traditions, in order to foster global understanding and a peaceful world. It was presented in Washington, D.C. in November 2009. Signatories include Queen Noor of Jordan, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Paul Simon.
Armstrong has been called "a prominent and prolific religious historian" and described as "arguably the most lucid, wide-ranging and consistently interesting religion writer today." She is a regular speaker on the Abrahamic tradition, and after the September 11 attacks she was in great demand as a lecturer, pleading for inter-faith dialogue.
Criticism
Atheist activist Sam Harris criticizes Armstrong's "benign" view of Islam, contending that "Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society." Harris is also strongly critical of Armstrong's "religious apology" of Islamic fundamentalism, accusing her and like-minded scholars of "political correctness."
Armstrong has also attracted the criticism of Christian philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. Craig has criticized Armstrong's "anti-realist" views about statements concerning God, particularly her assertion that "'God' is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence." Craig argues that Armstrong's view of God as ineffable is "self-refuting" and "logically incoherent.
Honors
1999 - Media Award, Muslin Public Affairs Council
2000 - Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize, University of Tübingen
2006 - Doctor of Letters, Aston University
2008 - TED Prize
2008 - Freedom of Worship Award, Roosevelt Institute
2011 - Nationalencyklopedin's International Knowledge Award
2011 - Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of St. Andrews
2014 - Honorary Doctor of Divinity, McGill University
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/5/2014.)
Book Reviews
Elegant and powerful.... Both erudite and accurate, dazzling in its breadth of knowledge and historical detail.... [Armstrong] seeks to demonstrate that, rather than putting the blame on the bloody images and legends in sacred texts and holy history, we should focus on the political contexts that frame religion.
Mark Juergensmeyer - Washington Post
[A] bold new book.... Armstrong makes a powerful case that critics like Dawkins ignore the lessons of the past and present in favor of a "dangerous oversimplification."... [Her argument] is strong enough to change minds.
Randy Dotinga - Christian Science Monitor
A timely work....This passionately argued book is certain to provoke heated debate against the background of the Isis atrocities and many other acts of violence perpetrated around the world today in the name of religion.
John Cornwell - Financial Times
With exquisite timing, religious historian Karen Armstrong steps forth with Fields of Blood . . . Laden with example.... [Armstrong’s] overall objective is to call a time-out. Think before you leap to prejudice, she says.... Among the most interesting stuff in [her] book is her deconstruction of the modern Islamic stereotype.... In the end, the point Armstrong feels most adamant about is that by blaming religion for violence, we are deliberately and disastrously blinding ourselves to the real, animating issues in the Middle East and Africa.
Patricia Pearson - Daily Beast
Detailed and often riveting...a mighty offering.... Armstrong can be relied on to have done her homework and she has the anthropologist’s respect for the ‘otherness’ of other cultures . . . [Her] oeuvre is extensive, bringing a rare mix of cool-headed scholarship and impassioned concern for humanity to bear on the vexed topic of religion.... [And she] is nothing if not democratic in her exposition.
Salley Vickers - Guardian (UK)
Eloquent and empathetic, which is rare, and impartial, which is rarer.... [Armstrong] ranges across the great empires and leading faiths of the world. Fields of Blood is never less than absorbing and most of the time as convincing as it is lucid and robust.... [This] wonderful book certainly cleanses the mind. It may even do a little repair work on the heart.
Ferdinand Mount - Spectator (UK)
From Gilgamesh to bin Laden, [Armstrong covers] almost five millennia of human experience.... Supplying the context of what may look like religiously motivated episodes of violence, in order to show that religion as such was not the prime cause.... She is no doubt right to say that the aggression of a modern jihadist does not represent some timeless essence of religion, and that other political, economic and cultural factors loom large in the stories of how and why individuals become radicalized.
Noel Malcolm - Telegraph (UK)
Fluent and elegant, never quite long enough...as much about the nature of warfare as it is about faith.... [Armstrong] is taking issue with a cliché, the routine claim that religion, advertising itself as humanity’s finest expression, has been responsible for most of the woes of the species.... The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Wars of Religion, even modern "jihadi" terrorism: each is investigated.... The picture is bleak, but certainly accurate.... Exploitation and oppression continue...but these provide a challenge for the godly and the godless alike. The proposition, like the book, is noble.
Ian Bel - Sunday Herald (Scotland)
(Starred review.) Provocative and supremely readable...the comparative nature of [Armstrong’s] inquiry is refreshing.... Bracing as ever, [she] sweeps through religious history around the globe and over 4,000 years to explain the yoking of religion and violence and to elucidate the ways in which religion has also been used to counter violence.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A well-written historical summary of what have traditionally been viewed as "religious" wars, showing convincingly that in pretty much all cases it was not so much religion as it was political issues that fueled the conflict. —Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Armstrong again impresses with the breadth of her knowledge and the skill with which she conveys it to us.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Epic in scale...a comprehensive and erudite study of the history of violence in relation to religion.... Armstrong leads readers patiently through history...her writing is clear and descriptive, her approach balanced and scholarly.... An intriguing read, useful resource and definitive voice in defense of the divine in human culture.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Fields of Blood:
1. Talk about Karen Armstrong's central theory that economics and politics have been the underlying causes of religious violence throughout history. Is her argument persuasive? Does her premise hold true today?
2. What have you learned about the various faiths that Armstrong covers—the three Abrahamic religions, as well as the Eastern religions? What surprised you or struck you as particularly noteworthy?
3. Discuss Armstrong's concept of the three different evolutionary stages of the human brain: "limbic," emotional, and reasoning. How does each of those stages play out in responses to violence and/or religion.
4. Is the Western world's belief in the separation of church and state a viable model for other cultures around the globe?
5. Does Fields of Blood give you cause for hope of peace?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, on and off line, with attribution. And if you have developed questions for your book club and would like to share them, we'd love to include them here—and give you credit. Thanks.)
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
Maureen Corrigan, 2014
Little, Brown & Co.
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316230070
Summary
It's a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan points out, many of us first read Fitzgerald's masterpiece when we were too young to comprehend its power.
Offering a fresh perspective on Gatsby, So We Read On takes readers into archives, high school classrooms, and onto the Long Island Sound to explore the novel's hidden depths, revealing its surprising debt to noir, its rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and its profound commentaries on race, class, and gender.
With rigor, wit, and infectious enthusiasm, Corrigan inspires us to re-experience Gatsby and, along the way, spins a fascinating story of her own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A. from Fordham University; M.A., Ph.D, University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Edgar Award for Criticism
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.
Maureen Corrigan is an American journalist, author and literary critic. She writes for the "Book World" section of the Washington Post, and has been a book critic on the NPR radio program Fresh Air for nearly 20 years. She is the author of So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (2014) and Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books (2005).
Corrigan holds a B.A. from Fordham University as well as an M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania and is Critic in Residence and a lecturer in English at Georgetown University. Her specialist subjects include 19th-century British literature, women's literature (with a special focus on autobiographies), popular culture, detective fiction, contemporary American literature, and Anglo-Irish literature.
In addition to her work with the Washington Post and Fresh Air, Corrigan's essays and reviews have appeared in the Village Voice, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, New York Observer, and Salon.
Along with Robin Winks, she was an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery & Suspense Fiction (1999), a work which won the Edgar Award for Criticism from Mystery Writers of America in 1999.
Corrigan lives in Washington, DC with her husband and daughter.
Books
So We Read On
Corrigan investigates what has made Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby endure over the years. She explores archives, high school classrooms, even the Long Island Sound. Her revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, Gatsby's rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and the book's profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender.
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading
Corrigan reviews the books that most influenced her personally, books that fall into three non-canonical genres—female extreme-adventure tales (narratives recounting "private tests of endurance" in women's lives), hard-boiled detective novels, and Catholic-martyr narratives. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/29/2014.)
Book Reviews
Mixing criticism with memoir...Corrigan contends that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel is greater than we think.... Corrigan asserts, Gatsby still doesn’t get its due.... She makes a good case...that our very familiarity with Gatsby’s Great American qualities has caused us to underrate it—and she does much to restore its stature.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] literary love letter...information-packed, entertaining.... The Great Gatsby...is examined from many angles—literary, sociological, cultural, personal, and historical.... Bursting with intellectual energy and fun facts —Liz French
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Corrigan's research was as intrepid as her analysis is ardent and expert, and she brings fact, thought, feelings, and personal experiences together in a buoyant, illuminating, and affecting narrative about one depthless novel, the transforming art of reading, and the endless tides that tumble together life and literature.
Booklist
[A]n occasionally self-indulgent but mostly spot-on reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest novel....[Corrigan] does a good job of pointing out what we should be paying attention to,... [and her] close reading is welcome, though one hopes that readers will first revisit Fitzgerald’s pages before dipping into hers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
Dan Jones, 2012 (Rev. ed., 2014)
Penguin Group (USA)
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143124924
Summary
The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem.
In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights.
This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Year’s War. It will appeal as much to readers of Tudor history as to fans of Game of Thrones. (From the publisher.)
The Plantagenets has been adapted as a 2014 BBC documentary series. Jones's followup book, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors, was published in 2014.
Author Bio
• Birth—July 27, 1981
• Where—Reading, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Cambridge
• Currently—lives in London, England
Dan Gwynne Jones is a British writer, historian, and journalist. He was born in Reading, England, to Welsh parents and attended The Royal Latin School, a state grammar school in Buckingham. In 2002, he took a first in history at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Currently, he lives in Battersea, London, with his wife and children.
Historical works
Jones's first history book was Summer of Blood, a popular narrative history of the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. It was published in 2009.
His second book, The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England, was published in 2012 in the UK and a year later in the US, where it became a New York Times bestseller. The book is a family portrait of the Plantagenet kings from Henry II to Richard II. In 2014, the BBC adapted the book into a documentary series.
The Wars of the Roses, Jones's third book was published in 2014. It picks up where The Plantagenets leaves off—the death of Henry V to the arrival of the Tudors (1420-1541).
Journalism
Jones is also a columnist at the London Evening Standard, where he writes regularly about sports. He has written for the Times (London) Sunday Times (London), Telegraph, Spectator, Daily Beast, Newsweek, Literary Review, New Statesman, GQ, BBC History Magazine, and History Today. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/20/14.)
Book Reviews
Like the medieval chroniclers he quarries for juicy anecdotes, Jones has opted for a bold narrative approach anchored firmly upon the personalities of the monarchs themselves yet deftly marshaling a vast supporting cast of counts, dukes, and bishops.... Fast-paced and accessible, The Plantagenets is old-fashioned storytelling and will be particularly appreciated by those who like their history red in tooth and claw. Mr. Jones tackles his subject with obvious relish.
Wall Street Journal
Delicious.... Jones has produced a rollicking, compelling book produced a rollicking, compelling book about a rollicking, compelling dynasty, one that makes the Tudors who followed them a century later look like ginger pussycats.... The Plantagenets is told with the latest historical evidence and rich in detail and scene-setting. You can almost smell the sea salt as the White Ship sinks, and hear the screams of the tortured at the execution grounds at Tyburn.
USA Today
Jones has brought the Plantagenets out of the shadows, revealing them in all their epic heroism and depravity. His is an engaging and readable account—itself an accomplishment given the gaps in medieval sources and a 300-year tableau—and yet researched with the exacting standards of an academician. The result is an enjoyable, often harrowing journey through a bloody, insecure era in which many of the underpinnings of English kingship and Anglo-American constitutional thinking were formed.
Washington Post
[T]he “unnaturally cruel” and powerful Plantagenets were the longest-reigning English royal dynasty, ruling for more than two centuries, from Henry II’s ascendance in 1154 after a violent civil war to Richard II’s deposition at the hands of his cousin Henry Bolingbroke in 1399.... Blood-soaked medieval England springs to vivid life in Jones’s highly readable, authoritative, and assertive history.
Publishers Weekly
[A] riveting portrait of the royal lineage from Henry II through Richard II.... The author's special focus is on the qualities and decisions that led to each ruler's eventual downfall. Despite the density caused by any attempt to cram centuries of English history into one volume, Jones manages to create a work that is highly accessible to readers with only a basic knowledge of this era.
Library Journal
They may lack the glamour of the Tudors or the majesty of the Victorians, but in Jones’ latest book, the Plantagenets are just as essential to the foundation of modern Britain.... Written with prose that keeps the reader captivated throughout accounts of the span of centuries and the not-always-glorious trials of kingship, this book is at all times approachable, academic, and entertaining. —James Orbesen
Booklist
A novelistic historical account of the bloodline that "stamped their mark forever on the English imagination."... Perhaps Jones' regular column in the London Standard has given him a different slant on history; however he manages, it's certainly to our benefit. Historians may question a few dates and events, but for enjoyable historical narratives, this book is a real winner.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)