“Hecht, a historian and poet, aims to give doubt its due in her lively and endlessly provocative new book…a continuous and intricate narrative of doubt.” - Christian Century “A bold and brilliant work and (lucky us) highly readable, thanks to the elegant and witty author.” - Garrison Keillor Who are the doubters, the questioners, the ones who were curious, the ones who rebelled and stood out from the crowd? We get it all in her delightful and informative narrative. "Jennifer Hecht provides a pretty thorough history of doubt. She celebrates such heroes of doubt as Confucius, Socrates, Jesus, Wang Ch’ung, Hypatia, Maimonides, Galileo, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Emily Dickinson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Margaret Sanger, people who drove history forward by challenging the powers and conventional wisdom of their time and heritage. Hecht shows that the great doubters ponder the same issues as the great believers. Just as belief has its own history featuring people whose unique expressions of faith forever changed the world, doubt has a vibrant story and tradition with its own saints, martyrs, and sages. In this sweeping history, Jennifer Michael Hecht celebrates doubt as an engine of creativity and as an alternative to the political and intellectual dangers of certainty.
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