Secular Wholeness: A Skeptic's Paths to a Richer Life

Can a skeptic the benefits of a religious practice? When you can't abide ideas of the supernatural, when no religious account of the world satisfies, how can you satisfy the need for depth, engagement, serenity in life?

Davd Cortesi, well-known as a writer on technical subjects, brings a programmer's bent for logic and scholar's research skills to the search for secular ways to:

* Gain existential validity, the sense we have a right to exist.

* Weave a richly connected, suppportive community.

* Gain the psychological benefits of meditation and prayer.

* Enjoy the stability and comfort of meaningful ritual.

* Formulate and justify a personal ethical code.

* Prepare for deaths: our own, and those of people we love.

The book also includes wide-ranging essays on:

* The pursuit of the mysic experience: How common is it? What is it like? What does it signify? How hard is it to reach?

* How do we identify heroes and role models? Whata does that imply for us and our children?

* What does science know about happiness? What are practical strategies for becoming happier?

The book draws as freely from recent papers in refereed journals as it does from the teachings of the Buddha, Solon, and Epicurus.

Optimistic, sometimes lyrical, but always grounded firmly in reason, Secular Wholeness is for anyone trying to live a deeper, more intentional life.

David Cortesi was a programmer with IBM in the years before computers were personal. With the personal computer revolution he became a free-lance writer and magazine columnist, producing several well-regarded books including Inside CP/M and The Essential OS/2 Handbook. Returnng to salaried employment, he contributed to a number of technical manuals for companies such as Infomix, Novell, and Silicon Graphics (where he wrote the IRIX Device Driver Programmer's Guide).

After retiring from daily work, he looked for a way to apply the skills he'd honed as a technical writer - skills of gathering complex information and organizing it for clear presentation - but to apply them to subjects that are less ephemeral than computer software. Secular Wholeness is the first result of this effort.