If you have read & enjoyed Ernst Cassirer's smaller to the point book "Language & Myth", this is the Next Step! "Essay on Man" is the fuller more advance version, with greater philosophical & historical detail than the pervious gem of a book. Don't worry, it's still easy to read. Maybe a little harder to read than Karl Jasper, but this is not Hegel's Outer Limits of personal idealist words. The most important historical highlights of human expression in language is written with clear insight that only Ernst Cassirer can do. I would consider this Ernst Cassirer's intermediate book with the classic "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms" being his Opus. If I may suggest: start with "Language & Myth", than "Essay on Man", & finish with "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms".