Cullen Murphy to Speak at UA on Latest Book about the Inquisition

Editor’s note: Mr. Murphy will be available for interviews prior to his lecture. Please contact dbadcock@lib.ua.edu if you wish to schedule an interview.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Cullen Murphy, editor at large for Vanity Fair, will give a lecture about his latest book, “God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World,” titled “The Inquisition through Modern Eyes” at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 22 in room 205 of Gorgas Library on The University of Alabama campus.

The lecture is co-sponsored by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, UA Libraries and the Alabama Center for the Book.

After his lecture, Murphy will be available to sign copies of the book, and guests will be invited to attend a reception.

According to the publisher’s note of “God’s Jury,” “Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews–and with burning at the stake–its targets were more numerous and its techniques more ambitious. The Inquisition pioneered surveillance and censorship and ‘scientific’ interrogation. As time went on, its methods and mindset spread far beyond the Church to become tools of secular persecution.”

Patricia Cohen wrote in her Jan.18 New York Times book review that, “Mr. Murphy wants to demonstrate how the mind-set and machinery of the Inquisition are inescapable products of the modern world that later surfaced in Stalin’s Russia, Argentina’s military junta and 21st-century America, where harsh interrogation tactics and unlimited detention were used at Guantánamo Bay.”

“God’s Jury” has received reviews from The New Yorker, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and has been the subject of interviews on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Fresh Air.”

Murphy is best known for his work at The Atlantic Monthly, where he worked for more than two decades as managing editor. For 25 years he wrote the comic strip Prince Valiant, which was drawn by his father, the illustrator John Cullen Murphy. Murphy is a member of the board of trustees of Amherst College, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Emily Dickinson Museum.

UA’s College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.

Since 2003, University Libraries has moved from 97th to 56th among the top 115 private and public university libraries in the United States and Canada which qualify for membership in the Association of Research Libraries.

The Alabama Center for the Book is the Alabama Affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book and is housed in The University of Alabama Libraries at The University of Alabama.