---
title: "Jennifer Michael Hecht"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hecht"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:39:21.684457+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Published works ==
Her debut poetry collection, The Next Ancient World, artfully mixes contemporary and ancient world views, histories, and myths. In 2002 it received the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize in Poetry, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, as well as ForeWord Magazine's award for Poetry Book of the Year. Her second collection, Funny, explores the implications of the human love of humor and jokes. It won the 2005 Felix Pollak Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press. Her most recent collection, Who Said (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), playfully asks the title question of some of the most iconic English language poems.
In 2003 Hecht published two books of history and philosophy with two different publishers. The first, Doubt: A History, is an epic, worldwide study of religious doubt throughout history. The other, The End of the Soul, is a profile of an unusual group of nineteenth-century French anthropologists who formed the Society of Mutual Autopsy to discover links between personality, ability and brain morphology. It received the prestigious Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for 2004 from Phi Beta Kappa society "for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity."
In 2007 Hecht published The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong in which she attempts to examine happiness through historical perspective. Hecht maintains that our current perception of happiness is affected by culture, and that future generations may well mock our view of happiness as we make fun of earlier generations.
In 2013 Hecht published Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. It is a study of intellectual and cultural history, in which she channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for persuasive arguments against it; arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness.
In 2023 Hecht published The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives.

== Bibliography ==

=== History and philosophy ===
2003 The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France, 1876-1936 — ISBN 0-231-12846-0
2003 Doubt, A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson — ISBN 0-06-009772-8
2007 The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn't Working Today — ISBN 0-06-081397-0
2013 Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It — ISBN 0-300-18608-8
2023 The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives — ISBN 0-374-29274-4

==== Selected journal articles ====
Hecht, Jennifer Michael (April 2000). "Vacher de Lapouge and the Rise of Nazi Science". Journal of the History of Ideas. 61 (2): 285–304. doi:10.1353/jhi.2000.0018. S2CID 170993471. Retrieved April 12, 2014. This article examines Georges Vacher de Lapouge's contribution to the ideology in the Nazi "Final Solution". "Lapouge's contribution to racism was a quantitative, well-written race theory that was replete with the language and tools of science. It was particularly appealing because it described a collection of human groups which sounded too scientific and clinical to be political."
Hecht, Jennifer Michael (March 1999). "The Solvency of Metaphysics: The Debate over Racial Science and Moral Philosophy in France,1890–1919". Isis. 90 (1): 1–24. doi:10.1086/384239. S2CID 143737005. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
Hecht, Jennifer Michael (Summer 1997). "A vigilant anthropology: Léonce Manouvrier and the disappearing numbers". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 33 (3): 221–240. doi:10.1002/(sici)1520-6696(199722)33:3<221::aid-jhbs2>3.0.co;2-u.
Hecht, Jennifer Michael (December 2013). "Stopping Suicide". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved April 12, 2014.

=== Poetry ===
2001 The Next Ancient World — ISBN 0-9710310-0-2
2005 Funny — ISBN 0-299-21400-1
2013 Who Said (Copper Canyon Press) – ISBN 978-1-55659-449-6

==== Collections ====
Best American Poetry 2005, Paul Muldoon and David Lehman, eds. (Scribner's, 2005).
Good Poems for Hard Times, Garrison Keillor, ed. (Viking/Penguin, 2005).
Poetry Daily, Boller, Selby, and Yost, eds. (Sourcebooks, 2003).
Good Poems, Garrison Keillor, ed. (Viking/Penguin, 2002).
Poems to Live by in Uncertain Times, Joan Murray, ed. (Beacon, 2001).
The Best American Poetry 1999, Robert Bly and David Lehman, eds. (Scribner's, 1999).

== Translations ==

=== Portuguese ===
Dúvida: uma História (Ediouro, 2005)
O Mito de Felicidade (Larousse, 2011)

=== Italian ===
Dubbio: una storia (Ariele, 2010)

=== Korean ===
"의심의 역사" (Imago, 2011)
"행복이란 무엇인가" (Gongjon, 2012)

=== Japanese ===
自殺の思想史―抗って生きるために (みすず書房, 2022)

=== Spanish ===
La futura antigüedad (Cielo Eléctrico, 2021)

=== Arabic ===
(2014, تاريخ الشك" (المركز القومي للترجمة. القاهرة"

== References ==

== External links ==
Jennifer Michael Hecht official website
Video lecture by Jennifer Michael Hecht on the history of religious and philosophical doubt.
Scale of Doubt Quiz created by Jennifer Michael Hecht Archived May 5, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
Poetic Atheism blog
The Lion and the Honeycomb, part of The Best American Poetry blog
"Sheathing the Bodkin: Combatting Suicide – A Conversation with Jennifer Michael Hecht" Archived October 28, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Ideas Roadshow, 2015