Even my friends who think poetry is boring and ponderous and Buddha a smiling statue (thanks probably to some stodgy professors 20 years ago) couldn't put this book down when they spotted it on my coffee table. With a sly sense of humor and enormous knowledge of his subject, Gary Gach has taken a single (and often misunderstood)theme and compiled a "panorama" of examples that give life and texture to Buddha and Buddhism.

What he has done is kind of like a hundred talented photographers, using radically different techniques, having their crack at one single image or subject, each in his or her own way. Uniting dozens of other voices, Gach has given texture and spirit to his subject.

What surprised me the most is that this book never gets old -- I read it over and over again, sometimes a page, sometimes a poem at a time.

I am the editor of this anthology.

CORRECTION: The title is not WHAT BOOK - the title is WHAT BOOK!?

Exclamation mark, question mark.

And an UPDATE: it received the American Book Award this year. This is the greatest honor.

The movement of Eastern religions to the West has been one of the most remarkable phenomena of the 20th century. Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing into the late 1990s, the influence of Buddhism (along with other Eastern religions) has been evident, perhaps most strongly in the arts and particularly strongly in contemporary poetry. Here is an enormous anthology of poetry celebrating that phenomenon.

The "concept" of the Net is very important for the uninitiated. Your zeroing in on how the Internet should be viewed in the mind's eye is excellent. It's the idea or the "vision" of the over-all system as a "place" that is expanding its own boundaries in all directions gives your readers a sense of the sheer "enormity" of it all. And yet, all of it is reachable by a simple wire with a tiny, plastic push-in-and-click wall plug!! Marvelous. Robert M. Jackson, Jr.

I'm about half way through your book. In fact I'm on page 148 beginning Web Culture. I have found your book to be very informitive. Was very interested in the section on Gopher. Tried to get information on swollen joints, but reread and found that I needed to use WWW and Exite to pull it up. As I read your book I try the new reading out on my computer. Again thanks for the information.

Al Witte

I recently bought your paperback (The Pocket Guide to the I'Net) at the local Wal-Mart. Of course I was skeptical, since I've read or scanned through a dozen how-to books and intro-to books in my endeavours to learn better and train better.

But ... something about your style engaged me. So I bought the book. Halfway through it I think I know what it is I like about your text ... you're an Internet teacher who agrees with *me*!

I was talking with Wendy Green last week (literally talking, not virtually) and described my reaction to your book. She encouraged me to drop you a line. She says you lurk on the misc.writing newsgroup from time to time and she recognized your name. (What a high-traffic newsgroup!)

I webmaster for my company (www.ag.org) and am also responsible to train anybody in our midst how to understand and navigate the 'Net. For a good part of the last year I lectured to our local Internet users' group and now moonlight at a local cybercafe teaching Internet classes for paying customers. So, my plate is full and I'm happy to find material which so nicely augments my own presentations!

For a while I struggled with the relative worth of helping people understand this beast. Especially when they're *paying* to do so! After all, these people just want to know how to send email and 'surf the Web', why should I waste time talking about its military roots for goodness sake?

So, if for no other reason, I appreciate your book for the affirmation I've found there. Of course, I don't *always* agree with your presentation or your choice of wording, but then who agrees with *anybody* one hundred percent? I can't argue with the facts of your text, though, you have certainly done your research! (I only wish it was footnoted! ) At heart I am a teacher and no matter what I do or where I'm at that's likely the role I've fallen into. From one teacher to another: you done good. (Of course, I'm sure you know that! The royalties should speak well enough!)

Writers.net is probably the most "reader-friendly" of all the specialized Internet guides on the market; each of the nineteen chapters of Writers.net is devoted to a particular genre of writing. Writers of mysteries, romances, science fiction, screenplays, and other styles need not burrow through endless pages to get to the sections that interest them most--each chapter is well-structured and organized to give the writer the resources s/he needs before logging onto the Internet and searching blindly for a paying e-publication or research database.

Gach catalogs URLs by the gigabyte, offering links to poetry and fiction mega-link lists, authors' and agents' homepages, research resources, and more. Most URLs listed are followed by a brief description of the site, while some chapters have the look of a printed "bookmark" file from a writer's web browser.

All writers will especially want to study the book's final chapter, which is devoted to Internet censorship and copyright issues, a sticky subject for writers on and off the computer. URLs and descriptions of the more affluent writers' unions and leagues are profiled here, as is information essential to any writer confused about her/his rights.

As with any printed directory of Websites, there is no guarantee that every URL listed in Gach's book will still be valid once you bring Writers.net home from the bookstore (this book is three years old, mind you). To combat the ever-changing climate of the Internet, Gach maintains a Webpage of book updates on his personal homepage, where one may find additions, URL changes, and even a sample chapter from the book.

Finally, all the information in one easily-accessible place! Gach has delivered an invaluable resource for writers, whether you're a Net newbie or an e-zine publisher. Any writer considering publishing on-line needs to read this.

Gary Gach has written the essential guide for using the World Wide Web to further a writing career. Because anyone can publish on the Web, writers can use the Internet to promote and publish their work as well as for research. Gach's book tells how to use your computer connections to get published online or in print in any of several genres, and there are dozen of ideas that will enrich a writers soul, mind, and pocketbook. It is an essential tool for computer-literate writers. --Mason West

This book is just plain poor. I purchased the Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism because I had previously read the Understanding Hinduism and Understanding Islam book of the same series. I enjoyed those books and felt they were well done. This book fails to live up the other two.

As one of the reviewers below notes, right from the beginning you get a taste of what is to come when the author describes the first Noble Truth as "Life involves dissatisfaction". Please.

I have read several other introduction-to-Buddhism type books and they were all better than this. In fact, I think if one did not already have a basic understanding of the concepts of Buddhism they would not be able to understand anything in this book. Perhaps the author tires to do too much and as a result I felt the book lacks focus.

The 'humor' is kind of annoying but that is something I have come to expect in the Idiot's series. What I think is more annoying is the way the author dumbs down the subject matter and jumps around from topic to topic. Also, the author seems to focus more on Buddhist culture than the core Buddhist beliefs and the practice of Buddhism itself. For example, there are chapters on Buddhism and Fine Arts, Buddhism and the Sciences, Buddhism and Popular Culture and so on. All these topics are mentioned but none of them are addressed in any detail. The author barely scratches the surface then moves on.

The book is 409 pages long and only sixteen of them are spent talking about the core principals of the Three Jewels and Four Noble Truths. The Eight Fold Path gets twelve pages. Further, the book does a terrible job of describing the different schools of Buddhism (Mahayana, Theravada, etc.) and explaining their differences.

If you are looking to read an introduction-to-Buddhism type book, I would recommend "Buddhism" from the Teach Yourself series.

Gary Gach does a good job of discussing the basics of Buddhism - the Three Jewels, the Eightfold Path, etc., but once he delves into the various branches of Buddhism and the different ways of meditating, he gets pretty vague and gets very annoying with the silly jokes. A much better book is "Buddhism for Beginners", written by a Tibetan Buddhist nun. It's clear, consise, and doesn't get bogged down in a lot of Sanskrit or Pali terminology that only confuses the beginner. The question and answer format is full of excellent analogies.

As for the other books in the Complete Idiot's series, I read the one on Islam and it is EXCELLENT. Reading this volume after the Islamic book was a big disappointment.

An articulate, accessible, comprehensive, "reader friendly survey of Buddhism, The Complete Idiot's Guide To Understanding Buddhism is presented from the perspective of a pragmatic American Buddhism. Diverse schools of Buddhism are surveyed and described including Vipassana, Zen, Pure Land, and Tibetan. Buddhism is also presented within diverse religious and philosophical contexts such as Christianity, Judaism, human relations, work, food, arts, and the social/political/environment issues of the modern world. The rules for living a Buddhist lifestyle (including meditation) are clear, complete, and comprehensive. In addition to the philosophies of Buddhism, the reader is also presented with cogent information on Buddhist films, environmental concerns from a Buddhist perspective, Buddhist celebrations, and more. The Complete Idiot's Guide To Understanding Buddhism is an ideal introduction and highly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as school, and community library interfaith reference collections.