THE BEST NONFICTION OF 2000

These three book reviews appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, December 3, 2000 as part of a feature highlighting what they considered to be the best non-fiction books of the year.  Reprinting these reviews here does not imply any endorsement on the part of this site.

THE BATTLE FOR GOD
By Karen Armstrong
Alfred A. Knopf: 446 pp., $27.50
The three great monotheistic traditions of the West--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--worship the same God but have competed over who has the purest link to the divine. These struggles, between these faiths and within them, is the subject of Karen Armstrong's sometimes dense, always informative and illuminating new book, "The Battle for God." Armstrong, a former nun and the author of several books on religion, traces the history of fundamentalist movements from the 15th century to the present. She sees the rise of the modern world as a dramatic transformation in human existence, and she believes the central issue has been the unresolved tension between mythos and logos. All of us, she asserts, need to confront the fears generated by the modern world, and if the dominant culture fails to do so, others, such as fundamentalists, will. That is a key message, one that is easily drowned out in contemporary society, with only occasional voices like Armstrong's reminding us that we forget it at our peril.
     

TERROR IN THE MIND OF GOD
The Global Rise of Religious Violence
By Mark Juergensmeyer
University of California Press:
318 pp., $27.50
The toughest question we can ask about religion is whether a faith that offers a message of love and peace bears some responsibility when one of its true believers is inspired to commit an act of violence in the name of God. That's the question that Mark Juergensmeyer dares to ask--and answer--in "Terror in the Mind of God," a study of religious violence in the contemporary world. "Religion," he writes, "is not innocent." As presented by the author, acts such as the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York by Islamic extremists--and the bombing of abortion clinics in Alabama and Georgia by their Christian counterparts--are only the most immediate examples of an affliction that can be observed all over the world and in virtually every religious community. "Although some observers try to explain away religion's recent ties to violence as an aberration," argues Juergensmeyer, "I look for explanations in the current forces of geopolitics and in a strain of violence that may be found at the deepest levels of the religious imagination."

"Terror in the Mind of God" is an unsettling book but also a courageous one. No one who truly cares about matters of faith can afford to ignore the dangers that lurk within religious extremism, and Juergensmeyer is ultimately serving the highest aspirations of organized religion when he insists on shedding light on the darker corners of human belief and human conduct.

UNHOLY WARS
Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism
By John K. Cooley
Pluto Press: 276 pp., $19.95 paper
John K. Cooley's important and timely book examines "a strange love-affair that went disastrously wrong," the alliance between America and "some of the most conservative and fanatical followers of Islam." To our knowledge, it is the first on this theme. "Unholy Wars" asks salient questions and draws on an impressive body of sources.