Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography

Published to commemorate Albert Schweitzer’s only visit to the United States 60 years ago, this anniversary edition of his autobiography gives 21st-century readers a unique and authoritative account of the man John F. Kennedy called "one of the transcendent moral influences of our century."

Schweitzer is celebrated around the world as a European pioneer of medical service in Africa, a groundbreaking philosopher and musical scholar, and a catalyst of environmental and peace activism. Yet people most revere Schweitzer for his dedication to serving others and his profound and influential ethic of reverence for life. For Schweitzer, reverence for life was not a theory or a philosophy but a discovery—a recognition that the capacity to experience and act on a reverence for all life is a fundamental part of human nature, a characteristic that sets human beings apart from the rest of the natural world.

This anniversary edition coincides with several high profile celebrations of his 1949 visit, as well as the release of a new feature film starring Jeroen Krabbe and Barbara Hershey. In addition to a foreword by Nobel Laureate and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, this edition features a new foreword by Lachlan Forrow, president of The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship.

"Shatters the old myth and allows us to glimpse the real Albert Schweitzer, a man whose moral example is as relevant and compelling in the 1990s as it was in the 1930s on first publication. Eloquent and heartfelt." -- Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

Allows us to glimpse the real Albert Schweitzer, a man whose moral example is as relevant and compelling in the 1990s as it was in the 1930s.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952. Although he proved himself highly gifted in science, theology, and music, and as an author, Schweitzer dedicated the later part of his life to medicine and to a hospital he founded in French Equatorial Africa. A true humanitarian, he used his Nobel Prize stipend to expand the hospital and to build a leper colony. His other titles available from Johns Hopkins University Press include The Quest of the Historical Jesus, The Primeval Forest, and The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle.