"James Carroll’s The Truth at the Heart of the Lie is at once a passionate love letter to the enduring beauty of the Catholic faith and a passionate indictment of the clericalism of the Catholic Church. This moving and revelatory book, written from deep personal experience, takes us to the heart of one of the great institutional and existential crises of our times."
- Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Swerve and Will in the World
Early in his writing career, James Carroll was welcomed by the critic Allen Tate as “a new original talent.” Twenty years later, the critic Martin Green wrote in The Atlantic, “Carroll has become one of the writers who shape our sense of ourselves.”
And now, more than forty years on, the critic Robert Brustein calls him “an elegiac artist, a writer of great inclusiveness and tender sensibility. He invariably endows his subjects with deep humanity and understanding.”
James Carroll is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Cloister, which the New York Times called "Incandescent;" and nine works of non-fiction, including The Truth at the Heart of the Lie, which Random House will publish in March, 2021. Other books include the National Book Award winning An American Requiem; the New York Times bestselling Constantine's Sword, now an acclaimed documentary; House of War, which won the first PEN-John Kenneth Galbraith Award; and Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which was named a 2011 Best Book by Publishers Weekly. His oped column appeared weekly in The Boston Globe for twenty-three years, and his essays appear at NEWYORKER.COM. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he lives in Boston with his wife, the writer Alexandra Marshall.
Recent Articles published by James Carroll:
June, 2019 (Cover Story of The Atlantic) - "To Save the Church, Dismantle the Priesthood."The long story of Christian anti-Semitism. “A triumph, a tragic tale beautifully told…a welcome throwback to an age when history was a branch of literature.”
- Charles R. Morris, Atlantic Monthly
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the Melcher Award.
Jerusalem in the history of religious violence - and in the American imagination. “I dare you to read this book and see Jerusalem, or yourself, the same way.”
- Bernard Avishai, author of The Hebrew Republic
A Personal history of the Pentagon. “There is only one writer in America with the historical depth, elegance of style, and moral complexity to have taken the full measure of this most central of American institutions.”
- Bill McKibben, author of The End Of Nature
“James Carroll is at his brilliant best in this thoughtful, eloquent, passionate, and provocative collection.” - Senator Edward M. Kennedy
“A journalistic page of glory. Carroll has shown that it is possible to see and understand the true nature of awful events - not only afterward, with hindsight, but even as they unfold, when it counts most.” - Jonathan Schell
“Crusade is the most compelling report and analysis that we’ve had yet of the Middle East conflict, specifically Iraq, and all in wonderfully readable style.” - John Kenneth Galbraith