Exploring Doubt: Landscapes of Loss and Longing

by Alex Wright

Christianity has often seemed impatient with the idea of doubt. Certainty, not irresolution, has been seen as the test of faith and key to unlocking participation in the supposed life to come. But when his marriage collapsed, Alex Wright knew that all his own certainties had been reduced to rubble. The future he had planned on the Norfolk coast disappeared as fast as a sea-fret burning up in the noonday sun. In this moving book, written out of his own disturbing experience of deep-rooted uncertainty about the future, the author suggests that it is actually doubt, not conviction, which expresses the more important insights about religion and the spiritual life; and, indeed, about life itself.

192 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2017

About the author

Alex Wright is a Brooklyn-based writer, researcher, and designer whose most recent book is Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age. His first book Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "a penetrating and highly entertaining meditation on our information age and its historical roots."

Alex's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Believer, Salon.com, The Wilson Quarterly, The Christian Science Monitor, and Harvard Magazine, among others.

Alex is a graduate faculty member at the School of Visual Arts' MFA program in Interaction Design. From 2009-2013, he was the Director of User Experience at The New York Times. He has also led research and design projects for Etsy, Yahoo!, Microsoft, IBM, The Long Now Foundation, Harvard University, the Internet Archive, and Yahoo!, among others. His work has won numerous industry awards, including a Webby, Cool Site of the Year, and an American Graphic Design Award.

Although painfully aware that the last thing the world needs is another bearded, bespectacled Brooklyn writer, Alex nonetheless chooses to live in Park Slope with his wife, two boys, and three banjos.