I read most of this book literally writhing in agony with a dying tooth. I sat in my dentist's waiting room while outside the entire foundation of his office was being jacked up and hammered on. Each hammer went straight through my jaw. Other things in my existence were going straight to hell.Without the embracement, understanding and solace I have found in Buddhism, I would not have been able to get through this time in my life with any degree of sanity, so I, as Bill Clinton used to say, feel Warner's pain. I am happy to say that Brad Warner's tale of his own many miseries, and how Zen meditation helped him cope, is valid, true and honest.Buddhism is essentially a psychological method for facing reality -- and thus a great deal of continuous adversity -- head-on. Adversity -- suffering -- exists, but it can be ended, or at least reduced to a very dull roar, by the practice of meditation, which will eventually clear the mind of all delusion, enabling the practitioner to deal with each moment as it is, directly and authentically. The book is the story of how Warner's practice sees him through the horrific demise of his mom from Huntington's disease (which it is possible he may inherit),the death of his grandmother, the loss of a beloved job with a Japanese monster flick production company,the collapse of his eight year marriage first into frigid nastiness and then its eventually end. On top of this the poor thing decides to go full time into the American Buddhist teacher racket, a thicket of backbiting poseurs if there ever were one. The general thesis of the book is that (a) he is a Buddhist teacher; (b) most people have a certain elevated pedestal type concept of what Buddhist teachers are, and (c) he sure isn't it -- or is he?I confess to having a definite bias against the whole idea of Buddhist "teachers", quite a lot of it being sour grapes because I can not and will probably never be able to get to a zendo from the middle of nowhere to participate in the whole teacher/student, sesshin/retreat concept. I also have a major disagreement with Warner that one must sit in a particular posture in order to receive the insights that zazen (Zen meditation) eventually provides, or even that one must sit at all. Nevertheless, like Warner, I have "tested it myself, and it worked".A Buddhist of the sort that Warner and I are takes a vow to bring every last sentient being to the state of enlightenment, or basically an authentic manifestion of our true nature and an understanding of one's life without illusion. Anyone who tests the Buddhist concepts (dharma) in one's own life and finds them to be true is required to pass them on to everyone else. On that basis, then, is Warner a good teacher, and is this book, as my colleague and teacher Randy Nowell opines, "the best book on American Zen?"Does Warner know how to throw someone out of the spiritual bed so that they will eventually wake up?Yes.He explains basic concepts such as: gradual enlightenment (intuition), leading to encouraging bits of sudden understanding when you least expect them; the vastly important and comforting knowledge that there is no such thing as a permanent, separate self, and that we are dying (consciously, cellularly) every second, that there is no time to lose. There is only a timeless string of Nows along an eternal continuum. Nothing we can think should ever be confused with Reality, only Reality itself. The most important thing he conveys is that the aforementioned Reality "never lives up to your expectations, no matter what your expectations are".Even more important, he explains things in what appears to be, at least on the page, a totally honest, authentic fashion, in plain English which is accessible to most folks, ranging in tone from a lot of Apatow-like six year old boy humor ("the toilet you're sitting on while reading this ...is a manifestation of the eternal present. (STOP THAT! YOU'LL GO BLIND!)" to stuff approaching art ("my mother's piercing howl careened off the walls of the museum, like the noise a coyote might make if you tied it up in the middle of a granite cave and started sawing off its tail. The high, hard walls amplified her screech, ricocheting it from one room to another so it could be heard by everyone inside--the schoolkids on their field trips, the grandmas and grandpas out for a pleasant afternoon, the art students dressed in black trying to pick up other art students dressed in black"). This sort of writing will enable people to pay attention long enough, perhaps, to be attracted to the method, and then, perhaps, to sit down, shut up, empty the mind and fly right. I only wish there were a way to make it more accessible to non-Buddhists. Maybe he (a former punk bassist with the band Zero Defex) should consider combining lectures with YouTube concert videos...