In today's increasingly electronic world, we say our personality traits are "hard-wired" and we "replay" our memories. But we use a different metaphor when we speak of someone "reading" another's mind or a desire to "turn over a new leaf"--these phrases refer to the "book of the self," an idea that dates from the beginnings of Western culture. Eric Jager traces the history and psychology of the self-as-text concept from antiquity to the modern...