Dale Wright, Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies at Occidental College, has for decades contributed competently and responsibly to Buddhist scholarship in English. The majority of his books have focused on Zen and, because this is not my specialty in Buddhist studies, I have relied on his work to ground and guide me. Further, his writing style is clear, crisp, and slightly conversational. This makes him a perfect candidate for the Oxford University Press series What Everyone Needs to Know. The aim of the series is to provide for the reader an authoritative primer on a given subject, and Wright delivers just this. In each book of the series, the author breaks up the topic in chapters that are intended to lead to progressive understanding. Each chapter then takes the form of questions posed by the author followed by her or his answers. Wright begins with early history, moves to Buddhist diversity, Buddhist teachings, then to practices, and Buddhism in the global world. The answers he gives to the questions he poses are short and succinct—approximately two pages per question. The questions are not necessarily progressive, but they do typically rather nicely follow one another in a reasonable order. Certainly, the ordering of his chapters progresses logically.

What is masterful about this book is that Wright manages to provide a great deal of information in each of his answers. He does so almost deceptively in the sense that it does not feel to the readers that we are being overwhelmed with data. Here his writing style is particularly apt for the book's agenda. For the most part, his answers are spot-on. Many scholars, myself included, often have an inner dialogue with books we are reading: How would I explain or frame this? I found myself posing this question often. Is this the best way to talk about karma? The bodhisattva path? And so on. Although I quibble here or there on a given explanation, of the ninety-nine questions and answers, I can scarcely find one that wasn't well done.

The greatest question in my mind is how successful this would be for the academic community. It is difficult for me to imagine a place for it. I did not learn anything new from the book, even as I appreciated every page. The book is simply not intended for a Buddhist academic audience. Wright acknowledges this right away: “This book is my best effort to … offer a well-rounded account of Buddhism for intelligent readers from many different backgrounds” (2–3). It succeeds brilliantly to this end. In the classroom, I could see this book used as something like a primer for a graduate course where the professor assigns it as a first-week text just to make sure students are grounded in the basics before launching into the greater depths of parts of the tradition. Conceivably, it could also be used in the same way for an upper-division course in Buddhism or Eastern thought. For a world religion course, I think one of the many competent textbooks available would be better. I think Buddhism: What Everyone Needs to Know takes its rightful place in bookstores for intelligent readers who would like to get an overall picture of the various Buddhist traditions. It is an excellent book, but it is not an academic book.