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Best-Selling Author Karen Armstrong in Positive Psychology Distinguished Speaker Series

Presented by University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center at Annenberg Center - Zellerbach Theater

April 28, 2011

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Karen Armstrong, Best-selling author and TED Prize Winner, will present: Compassion: Nice Idea or Urgent Global Imperative? Karen Armstrong, founder of the Charter for Compassion (www.charterforcompassion.org) will explore the meaning and centrality of compassion in all the major faith traditions and explain its relevance to our dangerously polarized world. Karen Armstrong is one of the world’s leading commentators on religious affairs and a best-selling author, whose books have been translated into forty-five languages. Her early work focused on the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but she has since begun to explore the eastern religions. In February 2008, she was awarded the TED prize and since then has been working with TED on and the Fetzer Institute on a major international project to create, launch and propagate the Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by religious and spiritual leaders from around the world. The Charter was launched in the fall of 2009 and has over 50,000 affirmers and now is featured in her most recent work, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. Her other books include: Through the Narrow Gate, an autobiographical work; A History of God; Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths; The Battle for God, A History of Fundamentalism; Islam, A Short History; Buddha; The Spiral Staircase: A Memoir; A Short History of Myth; The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions; Muhammad: A Prophet for our Time; The Bible: A Biography, and The Case for God. Her latest book is Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, published in December 2010 by Alfred A. Knopf.