Holy Cross Professor Leah Hager Cohen Makes Oprah Book of the Week
Friday, September 13, 2013
Holy Cross professor Leah Hager Cohen gets the nod from Oprah's Book of the Week this week.
This is the latest publication from Cohen, visiting English professor and W.H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at Holy Cross. The book, published this month by Penguin Group, was reviewed on the site by columnist Leigh Newman.
The thin lines we cross
"Imagine you're at a party with a boss, teacher or first date—someone whose admiration you want to earn," wrote Newman. "This person brings up a book you've never read. You panic at first, then nod along with his opinions, hoping not to be exposed and feeling, rightly, like a fraud. This experience—and others like it—inspired Leah Hager Cohen's slim new book, which advocates us all admitting our gaping holes in knowledge."
Newman describes Cohen's looks at psychological studies, school-teaching practices and protocols in police stations "to understand the consequences of feigned or imagined expertise, then expands the discussion to those instances when we actually do know what’s happening but can’t articulate or admit it.”
Newman continued, “What keeps us intrigued is her deeper investigation as to why we so mightily fear not knowing.”
Leah Hager Cohen
Cohen has written five non-fiction books including Glass, Paper, Beans, and five novels, most recently The Grief of Others, which was long listed for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award, a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a New York Times Notable Book, and a best book of the year in the San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus Reviews, the Washington Post and the Toronto Globe and Mail. Her newest novel, No Book but the World, will be published in April 2014. For more information on Cohen, go to her website at leahhagercohen.com.
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