A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Journalist Lesley Hazleton defends agnosticism as an active stance of intellectual and spiritual openness rather than indecision awaiting a final answer. Blending memoir, history, philosophy, science, and religious observation, she resists both dogmatic belief and dogmatic disbelief, exploring mystery, mortality, awe, doubt, uncertainty, and the human impulse to make certainty protect us from the vulnerability of not knowing.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
This book offers language for travelers who cannot honestly affirm a creed but do not recognize themselves in combative atheism or indifference. Hazleton treats uncertainty as a place from which curiosity and ethical seriousness can grow, not a temporary defect. It belongs as an eloquent personal manifesto and threshold companion. Its celebration of ambiguity is not an argument that all religious claims are equally plausible or that evidence and commitment cease to matter.
Good starting place if…
You feel intellectually alive in the space between belief and disbelief and want uncertainty framed as a durable, spirited posture rather than a failure to decide.
Know before you begin…
Hazleton writes essayistically and autobiographically, not as a systematic philosopher of religion or a neutral survey of agnostic positions. Her portraits of believers, atheists, and traditions are selective and sometimes rhetorically broad. Comfort with uncertainty can be liberating, but it is not available at equal social cost and does not answer every practical decision. Agnosticism should not become a claim of superiority over people whose convictions are careful, revisable, and differently grounded.