Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, historian, and commentator. She is the author of seven books including The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology, which won Phi Beta Kappa's 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award "For scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity." She also wrote the bestseller Doubt: A History (HarperOne, 2003) following religious doubt all over the world, throughout history. Her newest book is Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It (Yale, 2013). She has three books of poetry, most recently Who Says (Copper Canyon, 2013). Hecht earned her Ph.D. in the History of Science and European Cultural History in 1995 at Columbia and has taught in the graduate programs at The New School and Columbia.
Hecht has appeared on Hardball MSNBC, The Discovery Channel, and other television and is a guest on radio and podcasts, including The Brian Lehrer Show, Leonard Lopate, On Being, and Andrew Sullivan's The Dish. Her writing appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poetry, and The New Yorker. Publisher's Weekly called her poetry book, Funny, "One of the most original and entertaining books of the year." She has also published articles in such journals as The Journal of the History of Ideas and Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society. She lectures widely.
