Sean Bala reviewed All Is Change by Lawrence Sutin
Review of 'All Is Change' on 'Goodreads'
1 star
"All is Change: The Two-Thousand Year Journey of Buddhism to the West" by Lawrence Sutin is a book with what should be interesting material which is drowned in shoddy writing, poor organization, a clear lack of direction, and most disastrously, too much speculation with not enough evidence.
The book attempts to trace the history of Western-Buddhist interactions. This should be quite an interesting adventure through religion and history and at times is a thought provoking enterprise. In particular, I found the material on Jesuit missionaries in Asia to be enlightening. But in general Sutin seems to find ways to take the joy out of what should be interesting material through poor scholarship and bad organization. His writing is clunky and sloppy. The book is made up one to two page vignettes about various scholars stitched together. Given this, the book lacks coherent direction beyond its broad premise.
The biggest problem …
"All is Change: The Two-Thousand Year Journey of Buddhism to the West" by Lawrence Sutin is a book with what should be interesting material which is drowned in shoddy writing, poor organization, a clear lack of direction, and most disastrously, too much speculation with not enough evidence.
The book attempts to trace the history of Western-Buddhist interactions. This should be quite an interesting adventure through religion and history and at times is a thought provoking enterprise. In particular, I found the material on Jesuit missionaries in Asia to be enlightening. But in general Sutin seems to find ways to take the joy out of what should be interesting material through poor scholarship and bad organization. His writing is clunky and sloppy. The book is made up one to two page vignettes about various scholars stitched together. Given this, the book lacks coherent direction beyond its broad premise.
The biggest problem for Buddhist scholarship, especially in the West, is that scholars tend to pick out what they want to emphasize about the religion. The author tries to avoid this pitfall but ultimately creates a book that through its attempted objectivity does not engage the reader. I would not recommended it to anyone beyond the most seriously interested reader.