Thin Places: Essays From In Between, Jordan Kisner

Description

Thin Places
by Jordan Kisner
Paperback | April 13, 2021

Where do Americans look for meaning when belief slips away—and what replaces it when faith no longer holds?

In Thin Places, Jordan Kisner brings intellectual rigor and emotional openness to a searching collection of essays about belief, obsession, identity, and the quiet systems that shape modern American life. Raised in a nonreligious family, Kisner was unexpectedly “saved” at a Christian summer camp as a child, only to lose her faith as a teenager. What followed, she writes, was the distinctly American impulse to substitute one form of devotion for another—turning to yoga, self-help, politics, academia, wellness culture, fandom, and ambition in the ongoing search for transcendence.

Blending memoir with investigative reporting, Kisner examines the spaces where science, spirituality, psychology, and culture collide. The title essay—first published in Best American Essays—explores experimental neurosurgery used to treat severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, raising unsettling questions about where illness ends and identity begins. As Kisner confronts her own OCD and its emergence alongside the loss of her faith, the essays probe how much of the self can be altered before something essential is lost.

Clear-eyed, curious, and deeply humane, Thin Places moves fluidly between the personal and the philosophical, illuminating how Americans construct meaning in a secular age—and what those constructions reveal about longing, control, and hope.

This title is a remainder, offered at half the original cover price. Remainder copies are new and unread, but may show minor shelf wear.