If you've never seen a whole loaf, a half a loaf can look pretty good.

The author of this guide admits to wishing it could have been longer, and I'm sure there is something to be said for that view. After all, even in my ignorance of Hindu mythology, I've come across a few stories not found in this book, and I'm sure someone who knows more would find bigger holes.

But I would still call it a pretty good book. Hinduism is a complex religion -- a pantheon, a set of stories, a complex set of writings, a number of philosophies. This volume gives a taste of each. So we learn about the three basic gods -- Brahma, S(h)iva, and Vishnu. We learn about some of their incarnations. We also read stories about them. The tales are probably only the barest subset of those known in Hinduism -- but they serve to give the bare facts about the gods some context. More stories might have been better. On the other hand, by keeping the scope of the volume relatively brief, we are spared the dangers of the extremely complicated philosophical discussions that might arise.

The result is a book which can serve as a reference, but which can also be read with some pleasure simply to learn about Hindu and Buddhist mythology. If you want to know more about, say, Lakshmi or Ganesha, you might wish the book were longer. But if you want to know about Hinduism as a whole, this is an interesting place to start. ( )