Principles of Taoism

The author presents Taoism in it's historic entirety, spanning from it's origins to the present. He presents the various forms of Taoism, their founders and histories, as well as some of their practices. For a short book, it packs a lot of information. However, this does seem like an abbreviated version of Eva Wong's Shambala Guide to Taoism.

Wildish does an admirable job of trying to convey the history, development and basic principles of Taoism in this very slim book. He has used Eva Wong's material as his main source - this is evident by his use of "ching" as opposed to the more 'standard' "jing" found in many Taoist texts. He also uses dates found in Wong's books.The book combines a useful blend of history and philosophy to convey the general ideas behind Taoism. There are also some short sections on external and internal alchemy including some very basic information on Qigong.This is far superior to "Simple Taoism" and would be a good starting point for someone who is curious about Taoism. The next step would be Wong's work and perhaps Schipper's "The Taoist Body". Grigg's "The Tao of Zen" has some great historical work as well.