From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world.
Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In Living With a Wild God, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find ""the Truth"" about the universe and everything else: What's really going on? Why are we here? In middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange, so cataclysmic, that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it to anyone. It was the kind of event that people call a ""mystical experience""-and, to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, nothing less than shattering.
In Living With a Wild God, Ehrenreich reconstructs her childhood mission, bringing an older woman's wry and erudite perspective to a young girl's impassioned obsession with the questions that, at one point or another, torment us all. The result is both deeply personal and cosmically sweeping-a searing memoir and a profound reflection on science, religion, and the human condition. With her signature combination of intellectual rigor and uninhibited imagination, Ehrenreich offers a true literary achievement-a work that has the power not only to entertain but amaze.
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“Emotionally evocative, at times disturbing, Ehrenreich’s work is
engaging and invites—no, demands that its readers question the world
around them and everything they believe about it. The author’s rational
approach to researching ‘religious experiences’ similar to her own, her
mission to find an answer to: ‘Why are we here?’ is profoundly relatable
to those who have asked similar questions, who have wondered at
humanity’s purpose, and who have probed at the presence of the Other.
Part memoir, part mystical journey, this is essential for anyone with an
interest in religious studies, contemporary history, or memoir and
biography.”
—
Library Journal (starred review)