Does the business of daily living distance us from life's mysteries? Do
most Americans value spiritual thinking more as a hobby than as an
all-encompassing approach to life? Will the concept of the soul be
defunct after the next few generations? Child psychiatrist and
best-selling author Robert Coles offers a profound meditation on how
secular culture has settled into the hearts and minds of Americans. This
book is a sweeping essay on the shift from religious control over
Western society to the scientific dominance of the mind. Interwoven into
the story is Coles's personal quest for understanding how the sense of
the sacred has stood firm in the lives of individuals - both the famous
and everyday people whom he has known - even as they have struggled with
doubt.