Zen und die Kunst ein Motorrad zu warten

The book was published at a time of cultural upheaval regarding the issue of material success. The hippies wanted nothing to do with it. The conservatives no longer understood the world. Material success was the American dream. Millions of European day laborers had longed for it all their lives and had come to America hoping to find it here—in a world where they and their descendants would finally have enough to live on. And now their spoiled descendants threw this entire dream at their feet and criticized it relentlessly. What did they want?

This book offers a different, more serious alternative to material success. It is less an alternative than an expansion of the meaning of success to something greater than merely striving for a good position and avoiding wrongdoing. It is also something greater than mere freedom. It sets a positive goal to work towards, one that does not confine you. That, it seems to me, is the main reason for the book's success. It happened that the entire culture was precisely in search of what this book has to offer. In this sense, it is a bearer of culture.