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The Believer: Encounters with the Beginning, the End, and Our Place in the Middle
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About This Book
For Sarah Krasnostein it begins with a Mennonite choir performing on a subway platform, a fleeting moment of witness that sets her on a fascinating journey to find out why people need to believe in absolute truths and what happens when their beliefs crash into her own. Some of the people Krasnostein interviews believe in things many people do not. Ghosts. UFOs. The literal creation of the universe in six days. Some believe in things most people would like to. Dying with dignity and autonomy. Facing up to our transgressions with truthfulness. Living with integrity and compassion. By turns devastating and delighting, and captured in snapshot-vivid detail, these six profiles with a death doula, a geologist who believes the world is six thousand years old, a lecturer in neurobiology who spends his weekends ghost hunting, the fiancé of a disappeared pilot and UFO enthusiasts, a woman incarcerated for killing her husband after suffering years of domestic violence, and Mennonite families in New York will leave you convinced that the most ordinary-seeming people are often the most remarkable and that deep and abiding commonalities can be found within the greatest differences. Vivid, unconventional, entertaining, and full of wonder, Krasnostein interweaves the stories of these believers with compassion and empathy, culminating in an unforgettable tour of the human condition that cuts to the core of who we are as people, and what we're doing on this earth.
Reviews
"While it was the same curiosity and a desire to bridge distance that led Krasnostein to all these subjects, some are more compelling than others ..."
"[a] thoughtful meditation on humans' desire for certainty, security, and solace ..."
"This would be a very different, and less compelling book, if Krasnostein feigned agnosticism about who is more right then wrong, which she does not ..."
"I don't know if Krasnostein is entertained, credulous or just tolerant of the ghost types, and that is one of her gifts ..."
"Despite this, The Believer is a fascinating book ..."
"The result is a compassionate and engrossing look at 'how the stories we tell ourselves to deal with the distance between the world as it is and as we'd like it to be can stunt us or save us.'"
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