It's been said that Jack Kerouac made it cool to be a thinking person seeking a spiritual experience. And there is no doubt that the writers he knew and inspired—figures like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure—were thinkers seeking exactly that. In this re-claiming of their vision, English professor Robert Inchausti explores the Beat canon to illuminate how the movement was at heart a spiritual one, and went deeper than the Buddhism with which many of the key figures became identified. For them, real life triumphed over airy ideals, and authenticity became both the content and the vehicle for a kind of refurbished American Transcendentalism.