In 2003 Hecht published two books of history and philosophy with two different publishers. The first, "", 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 the Phi Beta Kappa Society "for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity."