Books : Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
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by: Jennifer Michael Hecht
List Price: $16.95Amazon.com's Price: $11.53 You Save: $5.42 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 121.509
EAN: 9780060097950
ISBN: 0060097957
Label: HarperOne
Manufacturer: HarperOne
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 576
Publication Date: September 01, 2004
Publisher: HarperOne
Release Date: September 07, 2004
Sales Rank: 23433
Studio: HarperOne
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In this grand sweeping history, Jennifer Michael Hecht celebrates doubt as an engine of creativity and as an alternative to the political and intellectual dangers of certainty. Just as belief has its own history featuring people whose unique expressions of faith have forever changed the world, doubt has a vibrant story and tradition with its own saints, martyrs, and sages.
Hecht blends her wide-ranging historical expertise, passionate admiration of the great doubters, and poet's sensibility to tell a stimulating story that is part intellectual history and part showcase of ordinary people asking themselves the difficult questions that confront us all. She celebrates the heroes of doubt -- people such as Confucius, Socrates, Jesus, Wang Ch'ung, Hypatia, Maimonides, Galileo, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Emily Dickinson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Margaret Sanger -- who drove history forward by challenging the powers and conventional wisdom of their time and heritage.
Hecht views the history of doubt as not only a tradition of challenging accepted religious beliefs, including the existence of God, but also as a progression of attempts to make sense of life, the natural world, and the self, each on their own terms. She shows that the great doubters ponder the same ultimate issues as the great believers: 'We live in a meaning-rupture because we are human and the universe is not.' Both doubters and believers have to confront this rupture. Doubt: A History reveals for the first time how the doubters bravely and inventively came up with their own answers to life's big questions.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - No Second Guessing Here
I hate the term "popular" history. It seems to imply something written in a back room for mass consumption. Perhaps this book will give it its good reputation back.
The history of Doubt is certainly not a subject you would think communicable to the average person, but Hecht does it with wit and clarity, without sacrificing objectivity and scholarly authority. My only objection is that one might wish she had gone a little deeper in some spots but, in order to take along the average ... Read More
Rating:  - Better than the Bible
If I weren't very old and married I'd chase after Mrs. Hecht. Her knowledge and clarity of expression are profound. I almost never read a book more than once, but this one I will as it covers (through the many thinkers she discusses) the major ideas of humankind. I've read the books by the leading atheists of the day and enjoyed and learned from each, but hers is the most comprehensive and open of them all. If you only read one - this would be it! I would enjoy communicating with her as I appreciate ... Read More
Rating: - Fascinating.
*If you're a doubter, you belong to a very old tradition!
This book is excellent: it's exhaustive and interesting, the only imperfection being that some sections are overly detailed (and thus LONG).
*I found a really clumsy mistake towards the end of the book. On page 472, the author quotes two very different Zen masters, both with the same family name, Suzuki (first Daisetz Teitaro, then Shunryu), erroneously thinking they are one and the same person!
*Read this book if ... Read More
Rating: - I Enjoyed This Book!
This is my first review for [...], but I feel like I need to share my thoughts on Jennifer Michael Hecht's survey of doubt because of my response to how she has done us a great favor in putting this before us.
This is not intended to be a complete, in-depth treatise on the entire history of doubt. What Hecht has done is to illustrate the surprising ways that doubt has informed our societies over the past 2600 years. Doubt has led to change, to revolution, to enlightenment and to freedom. None of these ... Read More
Rating: - Good overview, but uneven.
This book has been called 'magisterial' (Publisher's Weekly) and the ever interesting-and-quirky Garrison Keillor calls it 'bold and brilliant'. This praise is deserved, I think, because Hecht addresses an important, neglected subject. And she's hot, in a nerdtastic way -- I love her photo on the back of the HarperSanFrancisco paperpack.
'Doubt' is an excellent ramble through history, and the bibliography gives you a good source for further reading. Hecht hits most of the high points ably, and she ... Read More
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