Fields of Blood
Religion and the History of Violence
Karen Armstrong is the most original and inclusive speaker on the role of religion in the modern world. Her bestselling books, including A History of God, and sought-after talks examine both the differences and profound similarities between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and their impact on world events.
Karen Armstrong, OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) is a religious historian whose books have been translated into forty-five languages. They include international bestseller A History of God, as well as Islam: A Short History, A Short History of Myth, The Spiral Staircase, and most recently Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, which was called “provocative and extremely readable,” in a Publisher’s Weekly starred review. Her mostrecent work, The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts, was called a “dazzling accomplishment, a reflection of an encyclopedic knowledge of comparative religion and of a wisdom about spirituality in the human species” by the New York Times.
She was appointed by Kofi Anan to the High Level Group of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, with the task of diagnosing the causes of religious extremism, and was subsequently awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal. She was the recipient of the British Academy’s inaugural Nayef Al-Rodham Prize for Improving Transcultural Understanding, as well as the ISESCO/OCIS prize for Educators. She’s also been chosen as the laureate elect for the Princess of Asturias Prize for Social Sciences and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.