Product Description: Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history's most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness...read more

A cultural history of the concept of happiness challenges popular beliefs about how such goals as wealth, an ideal body, and anti-depressants have actually affected happiness levels in the past, in an account that tests popular scientific perspectives that promote dogmatic or ritualized modes of self-care. By the author of Doubt: A History. Reprint.