Secular humanists cannot feel anything but pride to be in the company of such a dizzying array of historical figures. As a philosophy major, I always enjoy visiting not only Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but the Cynics like Diogenes, the Stoics like Zeno, the Epicureans named for Epicurus, and the Skeptics who began with Pyrrho, and reading of the lasting influence they had. But the doubters were not just classical philosophers. Hecht takes us on a visit to Judaism, including the biblical books of Job and Ecclesiastes, to Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, and then back to Rome and Cicero, Lucretius, and Marcus Aurelius. She walks us through Christian doubt, Medieval doubt including Muslim skeptics, and the great Maimonides. She leads us through scholasticism and the European renaissance and Rabelais and Montaigne and into the scientific revolution. We come to the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Diderot, and David Hume and continue on to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, and then to the more recent Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud, and the contemporary Salman Rushdie of The Satanic Verses, Stephen Hawking of A Short History of Time, and Watson and Crick who deciphered the structure of DNA. And I haven't even named any women, like Margaret Sanger, Katherine Hepburn, and Jodie Foster.

There are hundreds more, including not only philosophers but scientists, historians, poets, musicians, actors, financiers, filmmakers, authors, inventors, fashion designers, and magicians, including Penn and Teller. The list is astounding. Secular humanists are in great company. Listen to Hecht: "The only thing…doubters really need, that believers have, is a sense that people like themselves have always been around, that they are part of a grand history. I hope it is clear now that doubt has such a history of its own, and that to be a doubter is a great old allegiance, deserving quiet respect and open pride." Hecht, as you might guess, is not only a historian but a poet.

--Earl Wunderli