Book excerpt: With style and lucidity, Delsol likens contemporary Western man to the mythical figure Icarus. During the twentieth-century, Delsol argues, man flew too closely to the sun of utopian ideology. Having been burned, he is now groping for a way to orient himself. But the ideas he once held so dear are no longer believable, and he has, for the most part, long since rejected the religious tradition that might now have provided an anchor.