About The Book

In this important and thought-provoking work, Karen Armstrong—one of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world—provides an impassioned and practical guide to helping us make the world a more compassionate place.

The twelve steps she suggests begin with “Learn About Compassion,” and close with “Love Your Enemies.” In between, she takes up self-love, mindfulness, suffering, sympathetic joy, the limits of our knowledge of others, and “concern for everybody.” She shares concrete methods to help us cultivate and expand our capacity for compassion, and provides a reading list to encourage us to “hear one another’s narratives.” Armstrong teaches us that becoming a compassionate human being is a lifelong project and a journey filled with rewards.

• The First Step: Learn About Compassion
• The Second Step: Look at Your Own World
• The Third Step: Compassion for Yourself
• The Fourth Step: Empathy
• The Fifth Step: Mindfulness
• The Sixth Step: Action
• The Seventh Step: How Little We Know
• The Eighth Step: How Should We Speak to One Another?
• The Ninth Step: Concern for Everybody
• The Tenth Step: Knowledge
• The Eleventh Step: Recognition
• The Twelfth Step: Love Your Enemies

About The Author

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs—including A History of God, The Battle for God, The Case for God, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation—and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages.

She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and recently launched with TED a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion. She lives in London.