Karen Armstrong

A portrait of the Buddha explores his identities both as an archetypal religious icon and as a man, chronicling his journey from his decision to leave a life of ease and power to his attainment of spiritual enlightenment.

Buddha

Kevin Wammer

If a book is called "Buddha", you kind of expect it to be a biography of, well, the Buddha. Karen Armstrong's Buddha looks like a biography of Siddharta Gautama but is rather a retelling of how Buddhism came to be. (To be fair, there doesn't seem to be enough source material to create a complete biography of Gautama Buddha.)

It's still a good book, but not entirely what I expected. For a biography of the Buddha, I preferred Thich Nhat Hanh's "Old Path White Clouds" more, though due to the "no-sources-issue", it's more a fictional than factual biography.

Steven Ovadia

It's very interesting to read a biography written without much biographical material. Armstrong does a nice job working with historic texts and extracting a narrative. It's short, but seems comprehensive.

Eva Talmadge

If you're new to Buddhism and want a good, basic introduction, this is a great one. I've bought three copies and given all of them away.

Buddha

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