Karen Armstrong is the author of Fields of Blood, A History of God, The Struggle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and Fields of Bloos, as well as a memoir, The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been published in forty-five different languages. She received the TED Prize in 2008, and she began working with TED on the Charter for Compassion, which was produced online by the general public and crafted by top intellectuals from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. In the fall of 2009, it was made available worldwide. She was also given the Franklin D. Roosevelt Award in 2008.

Roosevelt was awarded the Four Freedoms Medal. She was awarded the inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Award for Transcultural Understanding by the British Academy in 2013.