Rabble-Rouser for Peace: The Authorized Biography of Desmond Tutu (Hardcover)

by John Allen (Author)
Key Phrases: antiapartheid leaders, multiracial churches, amnesty committee, South Africa, Desmond Tutu, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
"The Bible is dynamite . . . nothing could be more radical." For South Africa's famous Anglican Archbishop Tutu, the choice between prayer and social action is not an either-or proposition; "rather, prayer inevitably drove you off your knees into action." Much has been written about Tutu's role as head of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where apartheid perpetrators came forward to confess and ask forgiveness, but the focus of this compelling biography by his longtime media secretary is on Tutu's dynamic leadership role in the apartheid resistance when those racist perpetrators were in power. The inside story of his life is also a gripping history of the fight for peaceful change. Tutu's passionate comments, whether he is meeting with world leaders to campaign for economic sanctions or defusing violent street battles at home, are both fierce and funny. But they can also be moving, as when he accepted the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize not for himself but for the millions of his people who had been uprooted and dumped as if they were rubbish. Hazel Rochman
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Review
"This book gives remarkable insights into how Tutu's spiritual worldview and discipline molded him into the preeminent religious leader in South Africa's struggle against racism and a passionate advocate of human rights internationally."

-- Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States and Nobel Peace Laureate

"In the cover photo of Rabble-Rouser for Peace, Desmond Tutu appears to be carrying a Bible. Of course. His passion and courage follow in the truth-telling tradition of the prophets, and his insistence on peace and forgiveness brings the teachings of Jesus to bear on some of the thorniest problems of modern life. For those of us who might become weary of fighting injustice and intolerance, there is the example of this lion of a man with a tender heart, who has demonstrated what a difference one person can make."

-- Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Senior Minister, The Riverside Church, New York City

"This is the story of a slight, sickly black boy, living at the margins of South African society, who grew up to be a towering figure of moral power, religious significance, and political impact -- one of the very few great human beings of our age. There is no one on earth who will not profit from reading this story, told with such precision, sympathy, and mounting dramatic tension by John Allen. But don't bother to pick it up unless you are willing to be transformed into a better person than you are at the present moment."

-- Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews

"This is a riveting book. John Allen has given us a profound portrait of one of the few great human beings of our age and of the country he did so much to save. He shows Archbishop Tutu in all his courage, his uproarious humor, his passion. And he discloses much that happened behind the scenes in the struggle that finally brought a peaceful revolution to South Africa."

-- Anthony Lewis, former columnist, The New York Times, and author of Gideon's Trumpet

"[W]ritten with the vividness of a novel...Allen...doesn't tell Tutu's story with the piousness of a press flack; just the opposite...[He] brings a figure of sometimes saintly proportions to human scale, revealing Tutu's hard-nosed, pragmatic, and wily sides."

-- Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly

"One might have expected a tame, worshipful "authorized" biography of Tutu, but this one really captures the full man. It will probably remain definitive."

-- The Christian Century

"Rabble Rouser for Peace connects the publicly political Tutu to the privately spiritual one, showing the seamless flow from one to the other...[Allen's] reporting is impeccable."

-- The Baltimore Sun

"I am suffering from acute withdrawal symptoms. Never before has reading a book had this effect on me. This life of Desmond Tutu, which I could hardly put down, is not only the work of a sensitive and perceptive journalist but of a person so intuitive, so inside his subject, that this could almost be an autobiography -- almost, but not quite, for John Allen who has long worked closely with Desmond Tutu can also stand back and look at the man he admires with a critical eye. Authorised this portrait may be, but it is not hagiography."

-- Paul Oestreicher, The Friend, UK Quaker journal

"Allen's wonderfully humanising biography offers plenty of cheerful anecdote and serious insight...Where [it] has an edge over previous and, most probably