James Carroll

From the author of the New York Times best-selling Constantine's sword comes a richly layered history, fueled by powerful insight, of the ancient city at the epicenter of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim experience.

"A masterful look at the paradoxical city on a hill...a meditation unlike any book published this season, indeed a meditation for all seasons." --Boston Globe To the standard set by Constantine's sword, Jerusalem, Jerusalem is again a "rare book that combines searing passion . . . with a subject that has affected all our lives" --Chicago Tribune 'Another winner from a skillful writer and thinker of the first rank." --Kirkus Reviews James Carroll's urgent, masterly Jerusalem, Jerusalem uncovers the ways in which the ancient city became, unlike any other in the world-- reaching deep into our contemporary lives-- an incendiary fantasy of a city.

In Carroll's provocative reading of the deep past, the Bible's brutality responded to the violence that threatened Jerusalem from the start. Centuries later, the mounting European fixation on a heavenly Jerusalem sparked both anti-Semitism and racist colonial contempt. The holy wars of the Knights Templar burned apocalyptic mayhem into the Western mind. Carroll's brilliant and original leap is to show how, as Christopher Columbus carried his own Jerusalemcentric worldview to the West, America too was powerfully shaped by the dream of the City on a Hill-- from Governor Winthrop to Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson to Ronald Reagan. The nuclear brinksmanship of the 1973 Yom Kippur War helps prove his point: religion and violence fuel each other, with Jerusalem the ground zero of the heat.

James Carroll was raised in Washington, D.C., and ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. He served as a chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, then left the priesthood to become a writer. A distinguished scholar- in-residence at Suffolk University, he is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a regular contributor to the Daily Beast. His critically admired books include Practicing Catholic, the National Book Award-winning An American Requiem, House of war, which won the first PEN/Galbraith Award, and the New York Times bestseller Constantine's sword, now an acclaimed documentary.

This event is brought to you by We the People, a film and lecture series made up of the Exeter Congregational Church, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Exeter, Christ Church, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Water Street Bookstore. It is free and open to the public.

Location: Street: Exeter Congregational Church Additional: 21 Front Street City: Exeter, Province: New Hampshire Postal Code: 03833-2456 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

James Carroll reads from Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World.

Wednesday, March 16, 6:00 p.m., Abbey Room, James Carroll on Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World James Carroll is a trustee at the Boston Public Library and a columnist for the Boston Globe. His urgent, masterful Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World uncovers the ways in which the ancient city became, unlike any other in the world —reaching far into our contemporary lives — an incendiary fantasy of a city. Carroll is the author of many award-winning books about his life, religion, power, and war. He has also published several novels. His memoir, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us, received the National Book Award in 1996. His Constantine’s Sword was recently made into an acclaimed documentary film. (timspalding)… (more)

James Carroll reads from Practicing Catholic.

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome award-winning author and former Catholic priest JAMES CARROLL for a discussion of his new book, Practicing Catholic, a personal history of the American Catholic Church during Carroll’s lifetime and an explaination of why he is still a practicing Catholic. Practicing Catholic traces the transformation of a medieval institution suspicious of American ideas of freedom and democracy into a church that has begun to embrace basic American principles of pluralism and respect for conscience. The book tells the story of heroes (Pope John XXIII, Thomas Merton, Cardinal Richard Cushing, William Sloane Coffin), and great events (Vatican II, the Kennedys, the end of the Cold War). Considering the new meaning of belief in a secular world, it stands against the fundamentalisms of “neo-athetists” as well as of born again Christians. Practicing Catholic shows how and why the world needs a renewed, rational, vital Catholic Church, centered in the story of the author's life-long journey. Carroll, who embraced the priesthood in his youth, finds in the writing life a renewal of religious belief. (ablachly)… (more)