Jennifer Michael Hecht, Author . Columbia Univ. $29.50 (416p) ISBN 978-0-231-12846-9
In late 19th-century France, the Catholic Church, which had once been revered as an authority in political and religious matters, found itself under attack from many sides. Chief among its antagonists was the Society of Anthropology in Paris,...
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Jennifer Michael Hecht, Author . Harper San Francisco $27.95 (576p) ISBN 978-0-06-009772-1
Cited midway through this magisterial book by Hecht (The End of the Soul), the Zen maxim "Great Doubt: great awakening. Little Doubt: little awakening. No Doubt: no awakening" reveals that skepticism is the sine qua non of reflection, and...
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Jennifer Michael Hecht, Author . Univ. of Wisconsin $26.95 (89p) ISBN 978-0-299-21404-3
Hecht's sophomore effort is one of the most entertaining, and most original, books of the year. Its conceit, barring a few introductory sonnets, is to riff on jokes-become-aphorisms, dismantling assumptions as quickly as she dishes punch lines. &
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Jennifer Michael Hecht, Author . Harper San Francisco $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-081397-0
History teaches us, contrary to popular belief, that money can buy happiness, drugs are mostly good, low-fat diets may not prevent cancer or heart disease. For Hecht, the assumptions about happiness that guide our actions are distorted by myths,...
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Jennifer Michael Hecht. Copper Canyon (Consortium, dist.), $16 trade paper (88p) ISBN 978-1-55659-449-6
If there is a fourth wall in reading, Hecht has broken it: “Good people of Yeshiva University/ and the Jewish Center Museum// You ask me for a poem in conversation/ with an art installation// on the theme of Genesis” she writes in a few lines from...
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Jennifer Michael Hecht. Yale Univ., $26 (280p) ISBN 978-0-300-18608-6
Suicide as a concept has been praised, defended, and vilified in various contexts throughout history as poet and scholar Hecht (Doubt: A History) painstakingly illustrates in this nuanced and unsettling work, whose title acts as a rallying refrain...
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Jennifer Michael Hecht. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $29 (368p) ISBN 978-0-374-29274-4
Poet and historian Hecht (Doubt) designs a liturgy for a disenchanted world in this insightful outing. Noting that many who happily “live outside religion” still yearn for its sense of meaning, Hecht suggests “a shift in the way we think about...
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