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Name: Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything: Ehrenreich, Barbara: 9781455501762: Amazon.com: Books
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Rating: 3.8 (603 reviews)

Barbara Ehrenreich

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Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything Hardcover – April 8, 2014

by Barbara Ehrenreich (Author)

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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.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Grand Central Publishing
Publication date

April 8, 2014
Dimensions

6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

145550176X
ISBN-13

978-1455501762
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They were just doing their job, these poets, which is really the job of all of us—to keep applying coat upon coat of human passion and grandiosity to the world around us, trying to cover up whatever it is that lies underneath.
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In fact, if you’re not prepared to die when you’re almost sixty, then I would say you’ve been falling down on your philosophical responsibilities as a grown-up human being.
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In this war against children we all enter on the losing side and carry our wounds along to the next generation.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Ehrenreich] resolutely avoids rhetoric in that 'blubbery vein'--which is why her book is such a rare feat...She struggles to make sense of the epiphany without recourse to the 'verbal hand-wavings about mystery and transcendence' that go with the territory... Ehrenreich has no interest in conversion...She wants, and inspires, open minds."―The Atlantic

"The questions in the world may be infinite, but perhaps the answers are few. And however we define that mystery, there's no escaping our essential obligation to it, for it may, as Ehrenreich writes, 'be seeking us out.'"―New York Times Book Review

"Ehrenreich has always been an intellectual and a journalistic badass... [She] ultimately arrives at a truce with the idea of God. You'll admire her journey."
―Entertainment Weekly

"The factor that makes each of [Barbara's] books so completely unique in American intellectual life is her persistent sensitivity to matters of social class. She can always see through the smokescreen, the cloud of fibs we generate to make ourselves feel better about a world where the work of the many subsidizes the opulent lifestyles of the few. That, plus the fact that she writes damned well. Better than almost anyone out there, in fact."―Salon

"As personal a piece of writing as she has ever done... A surprising turn for Ehrenreich, who for more than 40 years has been one of our most accomplished and outspoken advocacy journalists and activists."―The Los Angeles Times

"Until reading LIVING WITH A WILD GOD I counted the Mary Karr memoir trilogy as my favorite from a contemporary literary figure. Now, Ehrenreich's memoir is tied for first place with Karr's books... Thank goodness [this book] exists. It is quite likely to rock the minds of readers who dare open to the first page."―Houston Chronicle

"A smart and enjoyable read... Ehrenreich maintains a grip on a sensible skepticism about religious matters - and a positive hostility toward the idea of unthinking faith - while avoiding the narrow-minded excesses that more zealous atheists sometimes fall victim to."―The Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books include Natural Causes, Living with a Wild God, the award winning essay collection Had I Known, and Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as “a classic in social justice literature.” An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grand Central Publishing; First Edition (April 8, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 145550176X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1455501762
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,371,584 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,120 in Religious Leader Biographies
- #14,699 in Women's Biographies
- #39,392 in Memoirs (Books)

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BARBARA EHRENREICH is the author of fourteen books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. She lives in Virginia, USA.

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Raymond Kerr

A Living Flame Burns Down the Years

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2014

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This book captures a personal journey, an era, and a philosophical quest in a distinctive voice characterized by surprising turns of phrase, a spare elegance, penetrating insights, emotional honesty and biting humor. I had never heard of Barbara Ehrenreich until my wife pointed me to a back page interview in the Sunday New York Times magazine which spoke of an atheist's mystical encounter in Lone Pine, California. My wife, a woman's study major in the seventies, was well acquainted with Ms. Ehrenreich's feminist oeuvre, but it was the Lone Pine angle that caught my attention, as that is a spiritual pilgrimage spot for me. For some years now I have been traveling to what's known as The Great Space Center, situated at about 6000 feet, past the Alabama Hills, in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada, a half hour west of Lone Pine, which had formerly been home to a great spiritual light in my quest for truth, Franklin Merrell-Wolff. Dr. Wolff was a mystic and mathematician whose books "Pathways Through to Space" and "The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object" became powerful spiritual lodestones on my own search for Truth. Dr. Wolff chose to live above Lone Pine, near Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48, because he had been told the "spiritual energies" were more pronounced at the higher altitudes, and in the wake of his Awakening or Realization, unwilling to endure what he termed "the psychosphere" of the city, in this case LA, he pulled up stakes and packed off to Lone Pine. Dr. Wolff did speak of a phenomenon akin to the "induction" of an electric current in adjoining conductors, and attempted an analogous operation whereby he would, with mixed success, endeavor to transmit the Current of his Awakened Consciousness to students in his proximity along non-verbal pathways, and I actually wondered if Ms. Ehrenreich might have experienced a similar phenomenon from her own proximity to Dr. Wolff, who lived above Lone Pine at the time, though clearly numerous other factors and predispositions were at play in her own encounter with a Living Flame of Transcendent Presence that transformed the most mundane objects into self-effulgent gemstones. She'd already wrestled with episodes of "dissociation" which were both illuminating and disturbing, where commonplace objects were lit with non-conceptual significance and unexpected splendor, occasions which in another decade might have been termed Zen "satoris". In the immediate wake of her Lone Pine epiphany, she turns to Sartre and Huxley for literary corollaries of her experience, Sartre echoing the terror, Huxley articulating the wonder. The reverberations of that morning haunt her to this day, and much of this very personal and unflinching narrative is structured as a dialogue across time between Ms. Ehrenreich's youthful diary entries and her mature older self. That these entries were written by a young teenage girl is impressive in itself, showing as they do such a sophisticated grasp of language. Surely, they were cherry-picked from among less trenchant and articulate entries. Late bloomer that I am, I can't imagine dredging anything approaching that level of literary polish from my adolescent written expressions. One thing is clear, however, this book demonstrates a consummate mastery of the written word. I found the tone of her writing appealing as well: funny, poignant, unsparing and I'm not sure how to put it—passionately dispassionate, perhaps, though that sounds a little awkward. She gives a swift-flowing account of her personal journey before and since the Lone Pine epiphany, an experience somewhat shunted into the background as mundane existence takes precedence, but returns to the philosophical implications of that episode in the last chapter in an attempt to reconcile her adamantly scientific and atheist background with the undeniable power of that momentary opening into something Other. She never capitulates to the obvious nonsense of monotheistic theology, but flirts with animism and entertains other spiritual outlooks. Even Christopher Hitchens, hard-boiled atheist that he was, acknowledged the "existence of the numinous" and Ms. Ehrenreich certainly investigates that perspective. She doesn't really go into Buddhist views, which offer a "nontheistic" metaphysic, and I would suggest, offer a promising alternative to the spiritually-minded atheist. She could also check out Dr. Wolff, whose metaphysic of "Consciousness-Without-an-Object-or-a-Subject" offers an intellectually reputable vantage to thirsty atheists stranded in a depressing desert of dry materialism but who will not be satisfied by a mirage.

32 people found this helpful

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StrangePegs

Not an Easy Read

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2015

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So a bit of preamble about this one:
1. This is not a religious book, not in the traditional sense. The "God" Ehrenreich is talking about is not the Christian god nor any kind of monotheistic god. It is not god in any sense that we generally think about "God."
2. I've previously read a couple other of Ehrenreich's books (Nickel and Dimed and Bright-sided) and really enjoyed them. She approaches her topics with dogged determination and doesn't let go till she gets to the truth of the matter. I've never, however, taken the time to learn anything about her other than that she was a journalist who eased into books. As it turns out, her background is in science and she, in fact, has a PhD in... well, I forget in what, because she shifted what she was studying numerous times, and I forget what the doctorate finally ended up being in (and I don't feel like trying to find it, now). Something to do with immunology, though, I think. The science background explains why her investigative work has always been so thorough, though.

Speaking of science, this book contains a lot of hard science, descriptions and explanations, things I found fascinating (especially her experience with the silicon oscillations), but I can understand this being a barrier to many (maybe most?) readers. In fact, I scanned through some of the negative reviews of the book and many of them had to do with "too much science" or "I couldn't understand all the science." This book is definitely not written to be easily accessible to a large audience as her other books are. This book is personal, so all of the science, which is intensely personal to her, is left in. I'm not sure the book can even get to where it's trying to go without the science.

The other thing that can be an issue with the book is that it takes Ehrenreich a long time to get where she's going. She mentions in the foreword that there was an "event," a mystical experience, that happened to her when she was a teenager and that figuring out exactly what that was was part of the impetus for Living with a Wild God, so you start reading and expect to find out about this event and her quest, but... what you get is her childhood. And it was a horrible childhood, not that it seems she saw it that way at the time. When you grow up in that, though, you think it's normal.

It takes a long time to get to the event and, the whole time I was reading, I kept wondering what the point was of all the stuff she was telling me. Why did I want or need to know about her childhood and, well, everything else? But I trusted her, based on my prior reading experience with her (and the story she was telling really was interesting even though it seemed as if it had nothing to do with what the book was supposed to be about), to be going somewhere, so I kept reading. Then, eventually, we do get to the event, and it all made sense. I mean, without all of the background (and I do mean all of the background), I don't think you can really understand the significance of what happened and what happened after.

So I'm going to go back and say that this is not a religious book. This is not a book about how some atheist went out searching for the Truth and had a conversion experience (as in The Case for Christ). This is a book about an atheist who went out searching for the Truth and found... something. Something unexplainable. Something that isn't the "good and loving" god that Christians so often hold up as a happiness dispenser. What she found was something... primal. Chaotic. Only "good" in the sense that a storm can be good or a forest fire can be good.

This is not a book for people who already think they know it all and who think they have all the answers, especially about who and what god is. This is a book for those, like in Wizard of Oz, who are willing to look behind the curtain. Don't plan on an easy read.

158 people found this helpful

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Laurie McRobert

Caught in the tendrils of a strange attractor

Reviewed in Canada on May 19, 2014

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Barbara Ehrenreich's "Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything" constitutes a daunting task for any reviewer. It is a well written book which gives an account of her early childhood to her present reality. There is no question in my mind that here is a woman with a brilliant questioning mind.

Her early questioning about her raison d'etre leads her into a form of solipsistic existence. She feels alone and cut off from others; evidently it also separates her from realizing that human beings are real and have feelings. From the beginning one gets the impression that there is a deep hole in her psyche where feelings should reside and one hopes that by the end of the book it will be filled. We are left with two important facts about her early life: 1) her family's atheism; 2) her "mystical" experience of a surrounding nature coming alive like a grand burning bush; an experience which is to color her entire life.

We follow the details of her life. Her university education; her uber brilliance in chemistry and physics; her various employments; her dedicated work with the anti-war movement and activism in the 1960's, which continued for many years during which time she became a journalist, publishing many books. Ehrenreich marries at least three times and has two children--which to me came as a surprise since until that point in her story I assumed that she was not the type to want children.

The book is plagued with accounts of her sterile attitudes toward others. She recounts her mother's suicide and her father's descent into Alzheimer's dispassionately. As a reader I wondered when Ehrenreich would show signs of some kind of love for others. There is plenty of altruistic endeavor in her life but not much if any mention of loving others. Finally, at the very end of the book she rewards us with forays into accounts of others' mysticism in order to analyze what happened to her as a youth. In order to this she diverts us into the realm of animism. Surely, this was what happened to her during that strange experience that she just won't call mystical, when everything around her became alive. She continually hints at the Otherness she sometimes feels as being present in her life, as being something that she can't quite put her finger on, but something she is very aware of--something that is perhaps "out to get us" (my words).

It was only when I finished reading her book that I was granted the enlightenment of understanding what all of Ehrenreich's mathematical pattern chasing was all about. I see her life and her story as one big chaotic Mandelbrot set. All the enticing tendrils reaching out to attract her and always this black hole, this strange attractor pulling her closer and closer into its energy. Energy which definitely is not related to God, and especially not to the God of the Judaeo-Christian, or Islam tradition. No, the Other she feels cannot be identified with any religious entity currently in vogue, but it certainly can be related to the mesmerizing power of the strange attractor's black hole. Ehrenreich appears to be caught on the event horizon of fractal mathematics for the moment. At least until her next book.

Laurie McRobert,
Author,
Appearances: Genetic Mythology and Cosmic Instincts

One person found this helpful

Chrissy Frost

Just What is Going on Here?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2015

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Just what is going on here? This is the question about life that Ehrenreich sets as her adolescent mission to answer - and then revisits the quest much later in life. Her fascinating memoir tells the story of a troubled childhood in a highly dysfunctional family with quarrelling, cold, alcoholic (yet both quite brilliant)parents. As a teenager, Ehrenreich experiences a number of dissociative episodes, and one particularly vivid event in 1959 on a trek through the desert with friends. The book describes her journey from troubled teen to high achieving scholar, scientist, political activist, feminist and writer. But it is the nagging, unanswered questions about the true meaning of life... the truth of her dissociative experiences... and the disturbing possibility (for a scientist and outspoken athiest) that there may be a dimension to existence that skirts the realms of the spiritual. This is a most unusual memoir from an elegant writer and a truly open-minded thinker.

11 people found this helpful

Antoro

an emotional journey

Reviewed in Germany on May 2, 2014

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This book is very personal and deep, I was overwhelmed to read it. The famous writer and social activist Barbara Ehrenreich looks back to her teenage years, when she was asking deep questions all to herself, without close relations to anybody. She describes her intellectual evolution from solipsism to a strictly scientific attitude up to a intrinsic spiritual wonder at nature. A most beautiful and intriguing book, which I will keep in mind and reread.

5 people found this helpful

Heather in Victoria

"Living with a Wild God" shows quite a different side of Barbara Ehrenreich.

Reviewed in Canada on May 5, 2014

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I was very much looking forward to this new book by Barbara Ehrenreich and managed to get a library copy even before the Amazon copy arrived. It was a very interesting read and I imagine a difficult book to write. It is largely a memoir (to my way of thinking) and I was very curious to learn about Ehrenreich's early life, about which I knew nothing. She struggles to describe her mystical experiences - or neurological episodes - not an easy task given the experience is so personal and beyond words - and that she is an atheist (ie if she ascribed to a religion I guess she would have the words). Her background in science grounds her in a scientific explanation - even if the episodes might be classified as moments of mental illness. What can any of us make of this? Who knows? But it adds to the canon of literature about "mystical" experiences.
What surprised me though was how Ehrenreich came across as a person. As always with memoirs or personal essays, the author's "voice" comes through and you either like it or you don't. Ehrenreich had a tough childhood and she's a formidible intellect; she's also driven by social justice causes, which is why I've been drawn to her work. But red flags popped up for me as I was reading and I found myself thinking that I'd be either intimidated by her if I met her or just wouldn't like her, period. Nonetheless I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the big questions of life, existence and social change.

5 people found this helpful

Rookfarn

Thought-provoking.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2014

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To be honest I only bought this because it was on offer at 99p. I was expecting roughly 99p's worth of book but I was wrong. Although entirely about Ehrenreich's own life, her search for meaning and struggle with her inner demons it didn't come across to me as self-indulgent or self-obsessed. Rather, it is a brutally honest account of her life, at times shocking and at times inspiring, which I am happy to recommend others to read. At the end of the book it's a relief to find that the author does, in her old age, find some kind of peace and meaning to it all. Her conclusion is an intriguing one and I only wish she had taken the time to explore it a bit further.

14 people found this helpful

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