Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction

It is an excellent text which is required for a correspondance course I am taking on Buddhism which is taught by a fellow who has degrees from both Oxford and Harvard universities.

this is pretty interesting reading. for me, it's a school book so i am finding it to be a good reference.

I have taught from this book for several years, and I believe it is one of the best Buddhism survey textbooks available. The current edition is as much the work of Thanissaro Bikkhu as it is Willard Robinson. Bikkhu incorporates much of the most recent scholarship in Buddhist studies from scholars such as Gregory Schopen, Donald Lopez, etc. There are no grammatical mistakes I am aware of in the current edition. I suspect the book's only one-star rating came from a disgruntled student. This is not a book that dumbs down the Buddhist religion, or attempts to please everyone. It uses sophisticated language and presents a definite pont of view. As such, it may not be appropriate for underclassmen at some colleges. Strong's anthology "The Experience of Buddhism" is paired by the publisher with this text, and it too is excellent.

The one star review below was likely made by someone who read an early edition of the book - the past two editions have been an ambitious re-write by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. The result is a book whose clarity is unmatched by any other text I've come across that addresses the history of Buddhism.

I used an earlier edition of this book and the companion Experience of Buddhism in an introductory buddhism course in college, and found (and still find) both to be exremely useful as overviews and wide-ranging sourcebooks for information about the full spectrum of buddhist practice and thought. I'm not sure what grammatical errors the previous reviewer refers to -- perhaps peculiar to the present edition -- but I grew up to be an english teacher and recall no such dramatic flaws and logical inconsistency. As textbooks, both are definitely expensive, but actually are the best resources I can think of for an overview of the whole religion rather than one specific branch of it. (Though it is true that the writing in this particular book is a bit dry -- it is a textbook, after all).