William B. Irvine is professor of philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Over the last decade, he has been engaged in a multi-disciplinary investigation of “the human condition.” He is the author, most recently, of On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, and A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. His target audience for these books, he says, is not academic specialists but “anyone interested in carefully rethinking the assumptions we make in everyday life.”