Axel Michaels

This short book provides an overview of many aspects that are connected to Buddhism. First, the author gives a short outline of the main sources and scripts of the Buddhist canon. After that, he gives an account of the historical Buddha's life as well as the Buddha of legends. These first chapters make up roughly the first half of the book and while the style is somewhat dry and very academic, they are still understandable and interesting.
After that, the author tries to pack all of the important aspects of the religion into the remaining pages, so it is very intense and condensed reading, made up of many lists. I appreciate that he supports everything with translated quotes from the canon, but I think that the space devoted to these quotes should rather have been used for explanations since the quotes do not really enhance the understanding but rather make it even harder.
The last part of the book deals with the different schools of Buddhism as well as its arrival in the Western countries, but again, the writing is very concise and it is hard to follow.

It is clear that the author is very knowledgeable and there are many important and interesting aspects, but the book should be double length (none of the books in this publisher series are more than 120 pages, so the length is not the author's fault). It serves its purpose as a rather academic overview or introduction, but if the reader wishes to understand more of the teachings, other books are more helpful.… (mere)