The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

By Riane Eisler 

The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that war and the “war of the sexes” are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. And it provides verification that a better future is possible — and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting drama of what actually happened in our past.

This international bestseller — now in 27 foreign editions, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, and most European languages — tells a fascinating new story of our past, present, and the possibilities for our future. Weaving together evidence from art, archeology, religion, social science, history, and many other fields of inquiry into new patterns that more accurately fit the best available data, it shows that war and the “war of the sexes” are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible — and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting drama of what actually happened in our past.

Riane Eisler’s The Chalice & the Blade: Our History, Our Future has sold over 500,000 copies and has been translated into 26 languages including Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, German, Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian, with a British edition in Australia, India, and South Africa.

The book has influenced popular thinking, was called “the greatest murder mystery of all times,” and inspired Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code with its challenge to conventional religious dogmas.

It has been hailed as a major cultural contribution. For example, anthropologist Ashley Montagu called it “the most important book since Darwin’s Origin of Species” and novelist Isabel Allende wrote, “The Chalice & the Blade is one of those magnificent key books that can transform us.”

It has influenced other scholars. For example, in China, scholars applied the cultural transformation theory introduced in The Chalice & the Blade and found that (as in the West) an earlier partnership-oriented culture once flourished. Their book, The Chalice & the Blade in Chinese Culture, was published in 1995 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in English and Chinese.

 
 

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"The Chalice and The Blade may be the most significant work published in all our lifetimes. Read The Chalice and The Blade . . . it may make the future possible."– LA Weekly

"To read Eisler is to glimpse new vistas of human possibilities."– New Woman

"As important, perhaps more important, than the unearthing of Troy or the deciphering of cuneiform."—Bruce Wilshire, Professor of philosophy, Rutgers University

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