Jennifer Michael Hecht

Sheathing the Bodkin: Combating Suicide is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and poet, author and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht. After intriguing details about how she combines writing poetry, doing scholarly history and public writing, this wide-ranging conversation movingly embellishes upon Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book, Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, which is an intellectual and cultural history of the most persuasive arguments against suicide from the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such twentieth-century writers as Albert Camus.

This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, ..Or To Lend A Hand, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:

  1. Different Hats – And how to combine them
  2. Facing the Unthinkable – Confronting suicide
  3. Historical Examinations – A litany of intriguing insights
  4. Suffering – Worth recognizing
  5. Meaning and Mattering – The benefits of faith


Available in electronic format on all major booksellers, including:

–> Also available via your library through JSTOR, ProQuest Ebook Central, and EBSCO’s GOBI.



Sheathing the Bodkin: Combating Suicide is also part of the five-part Ideas Roadshow CollectionConversations About History, Volume 3, which is available in hardcover, paperback and electronic format.

–> Also available via your library through JSTOR, ProQuest Ebook Central, and EBSCO’s GOBI.