Karen Armstrong

Religion scholar Karen Armstrong on Islamic fundamentalism. Shes the author of the bestselling books The Battle for God, Jerusalem, and The History of God. Shes also the author of Islam: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles).

In her new book The Case for God, the author — a former nun — argues that religion is a practical discipline that can teach us to discover new capacities of the mind and heart.

When Armstrong decided to leave the Roman Catholic convent where she was a nun in 1969, she entered a world vastly different than the one she had been isolated from for seven years. She had no idea what was going on in Vietnam and had little idea what was happening in popular culture. She's written a new memoir, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, about her life in the convent and the spiritual quest that followed. Her other books include The Battle for God and A History of God.