Draw Your Weapons
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Draw Your Weapons Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Sarah Sentilles (Author, Narrator), Random House Audio (Publisher)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 70 ratings
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A single book might not change the world. But this utterly original meditation on art and war might transform the way you see the world - and that makes all the difference.

"How to live in the face of so much suffering? What difference can one person make in this beautiful, imperfect, and imperiled world?"

Through a dazzling combination of memoir, history, reporting, visual culture, literature, and theology, Sarah Sentilles offers an impassioned defense of life lived by peace and principle. It is a literary collage with an urgent hope at its core: that art might offer tools for remaking the world.

In Draw Your Weapons, Sentilles tells the true stories of Howard, a conscientious objector during World War II, and Miles, a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib, and in the process she challenges conventional thinking about how war is waged, witnessed, and resisted. The pacifist and the soldier both create art in response to war: Howard builds a violin; Miles paints portraits of detainees. With echoes of Susan Sontag and Maggie Nelson, Sentilles investigates images of violence from the era of slavery to the drone age. In doing so, she wrestles with some of our most profound questions: What does it take to inspire compassion? What impact can one person have? How should we respond to violence when it feels like it can't be stopped?

Draw Your Weapons stirs and confronts, disturbs and illuminates.

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  1. Listening Length
    6 hours and 57 minutes
  2. Author
    Sarah Sentilles
  3. Narrator
    Sarah Sentilles
  4. Audible release date
    July 4, 2017
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Random House Audio
  7. ASIN
    B0735K8YF3
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 6 hours and 57 minutes
Author Sarah Sentilles
Narrator Sarah Sentilles
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date July 04, 2017
Publisher Random House Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B0735K8YF3
Best Sellers Rank #356,336 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#464 in Political Philosophy (Audible Books & Originals)
#1,046 in Art (Audible Books & Originals)
#7,269 in Political Philosophy (Books)

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
70 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

D.T. Seymour
5.0 out of 5 stars The Age Of Sentilles Is Upon Us
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2017
Verified Purchase
We had to wait a long time for a new Sarah Sentilles book. However, it was worth it.

The strength in her books has been their narration. She makes revelations by telling stories. Whether they are stories about others (A Church Of Her Own), about herself (Breaking Up with God), or combination of both (Taught By America), these books immerse us into private worlds that lead us to the path of self-discovery. With an unmatched ability to select and highlight the most effective details, the reader is drawn in. The stories' art is found in intimacy.

When I first heard about Draw Your Weapons, I was concerned about keeping that narrative and intimacy. Yet, they have never been more integral to Sentilles' writing. While telling many stories in parallel, this is a seamless narrative that tells us THE STORY. There is never is a disconnected transition, despite the lack of rhetorical devices for that purpose. No transitionary language could move the reader from passage to passage more effectively than the precise language, curated content, and expert juxtaposition do in this deliberately-constructed work.

Never before has Sentilles's heart been more open to us. Her fondness for Howard, the World War II conscientious objector, and compassion for both the soldiers and the victims of war paint a picture of someone fully invested and integrated with those around her. Those who have followed Sentilles's magazine, are aware of her passion regarding the relationship between art, violence, and the well being of our citizens. In Draw Your Weapons this passion comes raging out in a manner rare in social commentary.

Our world needs more art like this.
8 people found this helpful
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Kathy S. Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars A Surprising Experience
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2018
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My son, an BFA visual art student, told me about Sarah Sentilles. He attended a lecture of hers in Louisville, Kentucky. I purchased this book after reading a sample, and I'm so glad I did. Sarah weaves personal stories, biblical stories, war stories. I find it very difficult to describe how she makes meaning with her words, but you won't be disappointed with this book. I had to stop many times to cry, to make notes in the text, to be amazed by the connections she was forcing me to make. An excellent book, one that I will return to again and again.
5 people found this helpful
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Foster Corbin
4.0 out of 5 stars Art and War
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2017
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
Reading Sarah Sentilles’ DRAW YOUR WEAPONS had a strange effect on me. I started it with much enthusiasm but was weary of war by the time I finished it. Now several days later it haunts me. The author’s bio is an interesting one. She was a graduate student in divinity school preparing to be a priest when she saw a photo of Abu Ghraib on the front page of the NEW YORK TIMES, one of two photos that convinced her to write this book. Because of the Abu Ghraib photograph, Ms. Sentilles left the church and got a job teaching at an art school.

In this difficult-to-describe book, the author interweaves the stories of two men, Howard and Miles, juxtaposed with quotations with various individuals (Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes et al. on photography), art showing the horror of war, whole passages from the Old and New Testaments, statements of world leaders on war—sometimes hypocritical. The list seems endless since she has certainly put a tremendous time and effort in her research as the notes indicate.

Howard Scott, the subject of the second photograph that so affected Ms. Sentilles (in the photo he is holding a violin) was a conscientious objector in World War II and was imprisoned twice for his position. While in prison he began constructing a violin out of scrap wood from instructions that his wife Ruane sent to him in her letters. The author meets and becomes friends with Mr. Scott and his daughter and is present for his birthday party just shortly before his death.

Miles, the second individual, shows up in one of Ms. Sentilles’ classes. He is a veteran of the Iraq War and was stationed at Abu Ghraib. Although he was supposed to have been a cook, he became a guard for the Iraqi prisoners. From Miles, the author gets another view of war and particularly Abu Ghraib. It would appear that he was a “good soldier” and treated those prisoners he was guarding with respect. In Sentilles’ words: “Sometimes Miles smiled at them [the prisoners] to try to make them feel comfortable. He, like most soldiers he knew, went to war to get a college education upon finishing his military obligation.” According to Miles, soldiers teared up when the detainees’ families visited them. Near the end of the book the author states: “I walked into the world of one picture: I met Howard and his family, listened to them, read their letters, stayed in their house, held the violin. The other picture walked into my world: Miles arrived in my classroom after serving at Abu Ghraib prison, talked to me about war, made a painting of a soldier I kept in my house.” And her students continue to create art.

This book is replete with myriads of examples of the awfulness of war and how it affects everyone involved and how people often turn to the arts for consolation. (I would argue that a case could be made that that is what President Bush is trying to do with his paintings of veterans. And all of us know of family members and friends whose lives are broken both physically and mentally when they return home from war. The husband of my mother’s cousin, a POW in World War II, returned home with tuberculosis and never had many well days thereafter in his too short life.)

A question that Ms. Sentilles’ does not answer—or if she does, I missed it—is are there good wars and bad wars or wars that have to be fought. For instance, J. Kael Weston in his book THE MIRROR TEST: AMERICA AT WAR IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN calls the Iraq War “the wrong war” and the Afghanistan War as the “right war.” I wonder if Ms. Sentilles would agree with that division. And what are her feelings about World War II, particularly after Pearl Harbor.

Whether you agree or disagree with Ms. Sentilles, she certainly draws her weapons well. I’m glad I read her book. It seems appropriate that I post this review on Memorial Day.
8 people found this helpful
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tina m.
5.0 out of 5 stars My Favorite
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2021
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Sarah’s style of writing surpasses all authors in excellency. Love this book and the message it carries. Very illuminating and insightful. I believe this is a must read for anyone who believes that humanity as a whole can do better than this. My new favorite book. A special thank you to Sarah for this amazing work
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mqd
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful words, poetry
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2017
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Wow. This book is incredible. Beautiful words, poetry, ministry, memoir and art. It makes you think about things that you don't normally want to think about. It makes you look at truths that are hard to face---and our personal connection to these truths. This is a book from which a 1000 discussions could be spun. Discussions that need to be had, about war and torture and art and humanity. I hope that many many people read this book and think and talk and share. From this, it's possible, that a better world will be created.
3 people found this helpful
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Kim Carter
5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite meditation/ indictment/ inspiration / call to action
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2018
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To use some dated (but perhaps ironic, in this case) phrasing, I was blown away by Draw Your Weapons. I experienced the book as an exquisite meditation/indictment/inspiration/call to action, and delighted in the intricacy of the seemingly disparate threads that ultimately comprise the “whole cloth” of being human. This is one of the few books I will undoubtedly read again - to savor, to absorb, to integrate more deeply into the meaning I continually make of our being in this world.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Mrs. Ann E. Russell
5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful approach to reminding us what is important.
Reviewed in Australia on October 9, 2019
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A very timely and well written book. I read it at the same time I was binge-watching Homeland and found the parallels disturbingly close. Very insightful.
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J helsham
4.0 out of 5 stars Art as a weapon against ignorance and the choices to face our culpability.
Reviewed in Australia on November 9, 2018
Verified Purchase
Very interesting but difficult book to face up to. Well worth the slow unravelling of the theme and the quiet hope in the lessons for humanity presented in close - up.
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