Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For years Mother Teresa has appeared at the top of every list of the world's most influential women, in company with Diana, Princess of Wales, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Different in almost every respect from those famous women, she did share one important quality: she was a star. In Mother Teresa, biographer Kathryn Spink goes beyond her subject's public persona to examine the life of a modern-day saint. In the course of tracing Mother Teresa's life--from her birth in Albania to her years in Ireland and then India with the Loreto Sisters to the founding of her own order, the Missionaries of Charity--Spink explores the ramifications of her subject's life and work on the lives of those she labored for and with.

Mother Teresa's frail appearance belied the steely will and public-relations savvy she brought to the task of loosening potential donor's purse strings and attracting attention to her cause. Was Mother Teresa a kind of spiritual colonialist, as critics have charged, more interested in helping the poor die in a state of grace than in changing the conditions in which they lived? Spink discusses this and other thorny questions with grace and honesty, at the same time emphasizing her subject's admirable achievements. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Spink's affectionate portrait of this remarkable woman shows us why so many call her a saint. The book beautifully serves Mother Teresa's memory." -- Christian Century

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (August 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062515535
• ISBN-13: 978-0062515537
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #99,583 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Life Worthy of Art, June 29, 2004

By	M. Swinney "Marc My Words" (Flower Mound, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A life such as Mother Teresa's is deserving of an insightful vibrant and skillfully told biography. I found Kathryn Spink's "Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography" left wanting. It did not live up to the magnitude of Mother Teresa's life of service and giving throughout the world but especially in India's Calcutta in the formation and running of the Sisters of Charity.

Spink's "Mother Teresa," reads, at times, like a laundry list of events with no coherent effort made to illuminate the person behind the events. The best biographies I have found don't rely so much on the cold hard history to build a story around, but rather insight as to who the person is and how they interacted with the world. I think of skillfully told biographies in which I walked away from the reading of them with insight, motivation, and the feeling that I knew the subject and was engaged in their life. Benson's "John Steinbeck: Writer," and Morris "Theodore Rex," come to mind as examples. Spink's "Mother Teresa," does not do the same.

I credit the writer for tackling some tough issues in the last two chapters. She addresses criticisms of Mother Teresa and the Sister's of Charity co-workers and does so without sidestepping difficult points of contention. Some social work critics fault the work of Mother Teresa for not wielding her influence to address the root causes of poverty and only tackling the end-product of suffering in a simplistic manner. In addition, Mother Teresa was loyal to the Catholic Church and stood staunch in support of difficult traditional stances espoused by that organization to include pro-life in all cases. Spink's does a good job of pitting Mother Teresa's perspective of service and belief to explain why she did what she did and why she believed as she did. However, this isn't until the last two chapters of the book and this illuminating approach could have been begun on page 1.

All in all, I would only recommend this book if you are attempting to delve deeply into the life and times of Mother Teresa and have read other books on that subject. If you want a good read and are just scratching the surface finding out what Mother Teresa's life was all about, look elsewhere dear reader.
--MMW

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is one of the most touching books that I've ever read, June 25, 2002

By	Sheeba Arnold (Yonkers, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is one of a kind. It is very very inspiring. Mother Teresa has conveyed the ideas of service and brotherhood through her life. Such devotion and love could come only from an ever-shining and divine spirit. I have re-read quite a few chapters of the book and I can say enthusiastically that this book has helped me a lot in spiritual growth and transformation.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A subject greater than her biography, August 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography (Hardcover)

Mother Teresa authorized this biography, but there are other books and videos that have captured her essence better. There's not much in the way of interviews with her contemporaries and her opponents in order to paint a picture of the subject. Instead, it's a very adoring and very superficial account of her life. (For instance, Eileen Egan is mentioned twice and apparently was never interviewed. Mother Teresa's niece is absent from the narrative. The Christopher Hitchens charges are alluded to, but not mentioned or addressed.) You can actually learn more about Mother Teresa and her deep, abiding love for God in other biographies or in the Petrie documentary. I read this while going back and forth into my other Mother Teresa books of prayers and found this one lacking in the one thing that Mother Teresa would have wanted: a sense of the reason why she became who she was.