The Lost Art of Scripture

'Karen Armstrong has written an amazingly wide-ranging book, showing that the world's religious texts can be a force for good today, rather than a cause of conflict. The scale of her knowledge never ceases to astonish' -- John Barton, author of A History of the Bible A triumph... Karen Armstrong is one of our great commentators on the sacred. In this book she explores the sacred texts with a scholar's eye and an illuminating clarity suggesting how much their wisdom and lasting power are still needed today -- Salley Vickers [The Lost Art of Scripture] takes us on a glorious journey... Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time -- AN Wilson * New Statesman * Rich and wide-ranging... [The Lost Art of Scripture] makes a fascinating read... a treasure chest of social and religious history. Armstrong's lucid prose makes her many-stranded story remarkably straightforward to follow... a learned and stimulating book -- Teresa Morgan * Tablet * A remarkable book by a remarkable writer... the author's mission is urgent in the light of the uses to which the world's scriptures are sometimes put -- Rev Dr Neil Richardson * Methodist Recorder * The Lost Art of Scripture... exhibits [Armstrong's] well-known and admired characteristics as a writer: an ability to be both authoritative on all the major faiths...a reasoned insistence that religion today is misunderstood, as much by the religious as by their critics; and a passionate appeal to our fractious and fractured world to embrace religion's core message...compassion and respect for others -- Peter Stanford * Sunday Times * Magisterial ... a dazzling accomplishment, a reflection of an encyclopaedic knowledge of comparative religion and of a wisdom about spirituality in the human species * New York Times Book Review * Exhilarating, challenging and curiously comforting... [The Lost Art of Scripture has] been written not only with intellectual rigour and an accessible turn of phrase, but also with love -- Lucy Winkett * Prospect * One of our best living writers on religion * Financial Times * Karen Armstrong is a genius -- A.N. Wilson Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion -- Alain De Botton A fascinating excursion into neo-Gnosticism... Armstrong...has clearly done an enormous amount of reading and research to handle so skilfully the mass of material she surveys -- Jack Carrigan * Catholic Herald * [Armstrong] weaves...[a] truly vast history into a coherent and fascinating narrative... an interesting and very well-written book -- Gavin Flood * Church Times * An epic story with a polemical edge... [a] lucid account of the evolution of sacred text... The Lost Art of Scripture is an impressive achievement, presenting a wide sweep of global religious history in little more than five hundred pages... Armstrong is...an accomplished and fluent writer * Literary Review *

Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun but left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full-time writer and broadcaster. She is the author of sixteen books and has been awarded with honours and prizes across the globe, including the British Academy's inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for improving transcultural understanding in 2013.