The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong is a former nun who renounced her vows and is now a prolific writer on the subject of religion. Some of her other works include A History of God and Islam: A Short History. Her work always display an incredible breadth of knowledge as well as very insightful analysis. While this results in books well worth reading, it often makes those same books difficult to read because of the sheer volume of information she puts into them. Her latest book, The Great Transformation, has both of those characteristics as well.

The title of "The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions" is, in short, what this book is about. To those who believe in a the literal truth of the creation story (whatever the religion), the answer to that is obvious, of course. However, in actual fact the great religions of the world, including those of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition as well as Buddhism and Hinduism, are really artifacts of ancient human make. However, they did not arise out of a religious vacuum, nor did they arise quickly. The questions this book seeks to answer are, what conditions did those religions arise out of and why did they arise?

Armstrong seeks to answer these questions in a chronological format, giving the history of the era (thus answering the first question) as she builds to an answer for the second. She covers the time, roughly, between 900 BC and 200 AD (although she chooses to use the contemptible CE terminology). The history of the era is one of great violence and turmoil. Peoples were on the move, and empires rose and fell, shattering the idea of permanence. To people who had belonged to state-centric religions, where the religion reflected and supported the "natural" order of kings, priests, and people, when the empire fell the religion was no longer valid. Without religion, they had nothing to affirm their existence, and needed a substitute. Animists, of course, wouldn't be troubled by this, but even most animist traditions relied on the idea of permanence.

Armstrong chooses to focus on four spiritual centers: Greece (more specifically Athens), Palestine (the land, not the country, obviously), India and China. While this seems simple enough, the picture is actually rather complex. Naturally, one may wonder what great religious tradition arose out of Greece. The answer is none. Their answer to the problems of the Axial Age was not religious in nature, although it was at times also spiritual and philosophical. The religions or spiritual traditions that did arise are quite numerous, more than the easily remembered Judaism, Buddhism or Confucianism. All were attempts to face the uncertainties of the world, and all attempted to find a way to live at peace with an un-peaceful world.

The bulk of the book details the developments of these religions in parallel with events in history. I felt that she made quite adequate arguments demonstrating how and why these developments were responding to outside events. That's one of the best reasons I could give for suggesting this book to readers. To my knowledge there is no other book that covers that territory for more than one religion, and it's quite enlightening to see them developing in parallel. It gives one a much more solid grasp to be able to place history in context than as an isolated incident.

The title might lead one to think that this book talks about the early days of each of these great religions. That's the last thing that she gets around to, and takes up the least time. I suppose many people don't know that religions don't just pop out fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. The religion of the Hebrews in the Bible (or Torah) was nothing like the rabbinic Judaism of today. Armstrong takes much more time explaining to us the Judaism of the prophets than in describing rabbinic Judaism (presumably because the reader is either more familiar with it already or there are many worthy books about precisely that). Her concern is mainly the gradual mutation that ends in these final religions or philosophies, and she stops basically where they have become at least the rudimentary version of their final forms.

All in all I think the book is well worth reading. Although she makes an attempt to draw a conclusion at the end that the stale religions that focus on doctrine rather than understanding and which assert that only their knowledge is the correct knowledge are useless and detrimental, she really doesn't spend too much time on that theme either, although it is certainly a worthy and interesting assertion. And yet of a four-hundred page book, the conclusion is only ten pages long. Perhaps she's saving that for yet another book.

All in all, I say read this book. It's challenging, to be sure, but in the end quite rewarding as well.

Terrorist by John Updike

Terrorist is the story of a teenage boy in New Jersey who is enlisted into a plot to carry out a devastating attack on America. Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy is the son of an Arab father (who abandoned them) and American mother (of Irish descent). He grows up devoutly religious, not through any effort of his mother's but for some ambiguous reasons the auther fails to fully identify. All the other characters are essentially worthless to the plot, even the school guidance counselor, Jack Levy, who gets almost as much time as Ahmad.

Evidently a lot of people love this man's writing, but they must be loving something else because this book is about worthless. Forgetting the issue of PC-ness he broaches by having an Arab-American as the terrorist of the title, it's just not very likely. Other reviewers have said that he chose this character as his instrument to reflect on the state of America today, and his origin serves solely as a plot device to cause his disaffection with this society. But I think if that's the case, it's a weak and unnecessary device, given that there are plenty of Americans who are as disaffected and more prone to violence than some half-Arab New Jersey teenager. As a matter of fact, although it's a topic not often discussed, the main terrorist threat in America comes from white Christian extremists. These people aren't even theoretical; they've actually been responsible for real terrorist acts all over the United States.

Be that as it may, Updike is one of the least astute character writers I've ever read. If anyone reading this doesn't like that assessment, I suggest picking up Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" or "The Brothers Karamazov". Now that's some character writing. I just felt like he endlessly described people's outsides and never touched their insides. It's a book, which means that you have the ability to show the reader the thoughts and feelings of a person, but not to adequately depict their facial expressions or colorations (in other words, it's not a picture). And yet he rarely took the opportunity to get inside anyone's mind, even the main character Ahmad's. And what little internal narration he did give Ahmad was pretty much the same thing over and over again. As for the other characters, he may have intended them to be mockeries of real people instead of making them real people, but if he was doing that I certainly didn't pick up any hints of satire to clue me in. The whole book was dead serious, and dead boring.

I tend to lump all books into two main categories: they're either about the characters or the plot. Given that the characters were such a failing in this book, you might be tempted to think the plot redeems it in some way. You would be wrong. The story itself advances slowly with about three-fourths of the book being wasted in unnecessary build-up (which would be fine if there were decent characters, but as it is...). The climax is so anti-climactic it actually made me sleepy. There's absolutely no payoff in the end.

If you're a fan of this guy, perhaps this book could work for you. For me, it was an unfortunate reading choice and a complete waste of time. If you want to read books about domestic terrorists that are just as implausible but a lot more exciting, pick up Tom Clancy.

Road Work by Mark Bowden

This is a sort of compendium of shorter works by Mark Bowden (journalist and author, most famous for Black Hawk Down) comprised of 19 stories on a variety of topics. As an example, he covers the issue of torture, a small bio of Saddam Hussein, the historic rivalry between two high school football teams, the genetic engineering of cattle, and even the story of the world's oldest living gorilla. There's something for everyone there.

I think Mark Bowden is a great journalist, because he writes the kind of in-depth stories that I like to read, and if you've read Black Hawk Down, you know he's a master at keeping personal bias out of it. Some of these stories are more personal though, and call for that kind of personal commentary, so you do get a different experience here than in a longer work like Black Hawk Down.

This is a good book if you want to read some non-fiction but don't want to commit to a 400 page book on one single topic. If you're the kind to get bored to tears by non-fiction but you still want to read it sometimes, this is the book for you. Not only are the stories short and entertaining, Bowden is a solid writer.

I suggest you pick this up at the library and give it a try. You may just find you want to read Black Hawk Down after all.