A sense of certainty and unhesitating confidence is rare in the contemporary world. An unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives and if we are honest about it then most of us will admit that we waver in the face of them. Dreyfus and Kelly examine some of the greatest books in the Western Canon to explain that the burden of choice is essentially a modern problem to which there is an age old solution. Dreyfus and Kelly explain the huge jump from Homers polytheistic world to the monotheistic one in which Dante wrote his Divine Comedy and Martin Luther wrote his ninetyfive theses. They then take the reader forward to the rejection of this Christian ideal to the Superman of Nietzsche and further onto the spiritual cornucopia of Herman Melvilles Moby Dick.Arrivingat the ennui and emptiness that pervades our modern world in which the work of Elizabeth Gilbert and David Foster Wallace arose Dreyfus and Kelly offer a newand very oldway to embrace the world a fresh way to live a meaningful life in a secular world show more