"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, future efforts to capture Tutu's life is that he tells us, with the intimacy only a trusted friend could glean, what was going on inside Tutu's head: his misgivings, his fears, his disappointments, his ambitions as he wrestled the apartheid beast."

-- John Carlin, The Observer

"The definitive study of the life of one of South Africa's great heroes...A full, rich account of Tutu's life..."

-- Organizers of South Africa's Alan Paton Award for Non-fiction (for which Rabble-Rouser for Peace was short-listed).