Collected from Campbell's legendary lectures at Cooper Union, these essays explore the role of myth in guiding individuals through life's major transitions — birth, initiation, marriage, death — and the crisis that arises when a culture's myths collapse. Campbell argues that the loss of living mythology is at the root of modern anxiety, addiction, and purposelessness, conditions that disproportionately affect men who have no rites of passage or elder wisdom to orient them. The essays span Eastern and Western traditions, showing how the same mythic patterns appear across all cultures, offering men a universal grammar of the soul. Each chapter functions as a standalone meditation on meaning, identity, and the sacred.