Fields of Blood

From the renowned and bestselling author of A History of God, a sweeping exploration of religion's connection to violence.

In these troubled times, we risk basing decisions of real and dangerous consequence on mistaken understandings of the faiths subscribed around us—in our immediate community as well as globally. And so, with her deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong examines the impulse toward violence in each of the world's great religions. The comparative approach is new: while there have been plenty of books on jihad or the Crusades, this book lays the Christian and the Islamic way of war side by side, along with those of Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism and Judaism. Each of these faiths arose in agrarian societies with… Keep Reading