On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts - Paperback

by James K. A. Smith (Author)

★ Publishers Weekly starred review

One of the Top 100 Books and One of the 5 Best Books in Religion for 2019, Publishers Weekly

Christianity Today 2020 Book Award Winner (Spiritual Formation)

Outreach 2020 Resource of the Year (Spiritual Growth)

Foreword INDIES 2019 Honorable Mention for Religion

This is not a book about Saint Augustine. In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about each of us. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time on the road with Augustine, and he invites us to take this journey too, for this ancient African thinker knows far more about us than we might expect.

Following Smith's successful You Are What You Love, this book shows how Augustine can be a pilgrim guide to a spirituality that meets the complicated world we live in. Augustine, says Smith, is the patron saint of restless hearts--a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart's true home and he can help us find our way. "What makes Augustine a guide worth considering," says Smith, "is that he knows where home is, where rest can be found, what peace feels like, even if it is sometimes ephemeral and elusive along the way." Addressing believers and skeptics alike, this book shows how Augustine's timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life, covering topics such as ambition, sex, friendship, freedom, parenthood, and death. As Smith vividly and colorfully brings Augustine to life for 21st-century readers, he also offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes.

Front Jacket

On the Road with Saint Augustine offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes. Addressing believers and skeptics alike, this book shows how Augustine's timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life, covering such wide-ranging topics as ambition, sex, friendship, freedom, parenthood, and death.

"As the author well says, this is not a book about St. Augustine. But it certainly is a guide for reading Augustine as he wrote it and would probably prefer to be read, with a restless heart."
--Justo L. Gonz疝ez, author of The Mestizo Augustine

"It is a fundamental Augustinian trope that we are not home. Here Jamie Smith riffs with unrivaled depth and texture on what it means to be in via--to be on the way--to be not at home. I am grateful, and I will keep this book with me as I pilgrim."
--Lauren F. Winner, author of The Dangers of Christian Practice and Still

"This book is James K. A. Smith's Born to Run. It's the story of the journey we are all on. For Smith, Saint Augustine is the perfect navigator. He's familiar with that 'highway jammed with broken heroes, ' because he knows what it feels like to be a heart on the run. If you lust for the highway and feel the engine idling deep inside, your ride is here. Augustine is in the passenger seat with the map of our heart unfolded on his lap, waiting to take us home."
--Bob Crawford, member of The Avett Brothers and cohost of The Road to Now podcast

"On the Road with Saint Augustine is a spiritual reflection that reminds us why the ancient saint is not only essential for us but inescapable. With Augustine as guide, Smith takes the reader on a tour of the human heart. Profound, personal, and fast-paced, the book will nourish readers in almost any spiritual state."
--Kyle Harper, University of Oklahoma

Back Jacket

The Patron Saint of Restless Hearts

This is not a book about Saint Augustine. In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about each of us.

Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time on the road with Augustine and invites us to join him on this journey with an ancient African thinker who knows far more about us than we might expect. Augustine, says Smith, is the patron saint of restless hearts--a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart's true home and he can help us find our way.

"On the Road with Saint Augustine is a learned, large-hearted, and quite lively introduction to Augustine, or to life by way of Augustine, or to God by way of both. The variety of Smith's references is astonishing, as is the seamless way he moves among them. I expect many modern readers will find themselves--and, crucially, much more than themselves--in this book."--Christian Wiman, author of My Bright Abyss and Every Riven Thing

"Augustine of Hippo is the patron saint of restless hearts. Now James K. A. Smith, long one of our most interesting theological thinkers, both orthodox and outlier, reintroduces this figure who is at once strange and familiar, ancient and contemporary. This book is a journey into the greatest journey of all, and a delight to read. Highly recommended."
--Krista Tippett, founder and CEO, The On Being Project; host, On Being; curator, The Civil Conversations Project

"Fascinating, engrossing, insightful, beautifully written, and often brilliant, this new book will open up the story and spirituality of St. Augustine to a new generation of readers and seekers."
--James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage

"Smith opens this book by placing the contemporary culture of seeking the real, authentic self alongside the works of Augustine; then he continues by placing our contemporary experience alongside Augustine's biography; both moves yield a fund of interesting insights."
--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

"By following Augustine's model and sharing his own faith journey, Smith makes Augustine's guidance accessible to a new generation of seekers."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author Biography

James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is a popular speaker who has written many books, including the Christianity Today Book Award winner You Are What You Love. He is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He is also editor in chief of Image, a quarterly journal at the intersection of art, faith, and mystery. Smith has written for Christianity Today, the Christian Century, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Washington Post.