The author's ninth and final book on the Work is a comprehensive and factual account of Gurdjieff and The Fourth Way. Material from all of Gurdjieff's direct students and their library archives, much of it not available until recently, is assembled in chronological form as it happened.

The aim is to give an objective, panoramic view of Gurdjieff's life, the inner substance of the seminal and scientific teaching of self-development he discovered, and his unrelenting mission to introduce and establish this esoteric teaching in the West.

Included are Uspenskii's (original Russian spelling) never-before-published essays "Why I Left Gurdjieff" and "Where I Diverge from Gurdjieff"; original deleted material from Search; Uspenskii's American femme fatale, Carman Barnes; Jessie Dwight Orage's short stories "Elsie at the Prieuré" and "Elsie and Allah"; notes of Kathryn Hulme and Solita Solano (1935–39); The Science of Idiotism, and the complete scenario of Gurdjieff's ballet, The Struggle of the Magicians.