From the look of it, one would expect this to be a dull, dry, academic book, but it's really a lot of fun. Auerbach quotes extensively from the books you probably always meant to read and uses them in a meaningful and entertaining way. His point is that over the last three thousand years or so, the West has changed the ways in which it views reality--and that the "modern" viewpoint is not necessarily the only way in which the world can be presented. Good book!