The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions – Authentic Poetic Translations with Insightful Introductions from Eight Traditions

I wanted a book on the basics of the world’s most dominant religions and their sacred texts. This is really great and besides selections of important sacred texts of each religion, the reader is given a very basic overview of the specific religion. It is very well organized. EXACTLY what I was looking for!

Needed it for school perfect

To begin, Novak assembled this book as a compendium to accompany Huston Smith's book on world religions, so you may want to give both of them a shot at the same time, reading Novak's sections after the corresponding Smith sections. Concerning the book itself, it is a fantastic collection of original sources and it looks like you can get a used copy + shipping for less than $10. For me, that says a lot. Concerning what was selected, there is no doubt that Novak put some serious effort in selecting what he did. The reader will get a very nice exposure to many elements within each religious tradition. However, the translations chosen are not so impressive, but there may be issues beyond the author's control here, so I cannot fault him too much. For example, the Dao Dejing was translated by Stephen Mitchell, who did an alright job, but his is hardly considered to be the authoritative translation. The good news is that it is nearly published in it entirety! On a similar positive note, the citations in the back are often quite informative. With a flip to the back, you will be brought to the original source. Now, I don't want to say that this book is showing its age, but many of the sources seem a bit dated. My suspicion is that this was how the price of the book was kept to a minimum. Also, in the last fourteen years since this was published, a lot of good translation work has come from Chinese philosophy. I worry that some of the older translations may give false impressions as to the state of the research today. With this book, you have to take the good with the bad, and the best part seems to be the affordability. You will not be able to find a collection as thorough as this for anywhere near the price.

Purchased for a college class in World Religions. Basically, "The World's Wisdom" provides a bridge between ancient, sacred traditions and contemporary seekers, focusing on creating a connection between the lasting importance of spiritual wisdom across cultures.

It is, to say the least, a rather daunting and thankless task to undertake. To gather bits and pieces of the worlds wisdom and spiritual writings into one small text--it is certain that you won't please everyone. However the author does a beautiful job here and has selected some real gems for you to savor and to spur the novice on to further reading. This makes a fantastic night stand book--and that is no slight of the book in any way. But I enjoy reading a few passages out of this before falling to sleep. It's not that the book will put you to sleep, rather it's best to read these sort of writings when your mind has settled from the turmoil of the day.

I read “The World’s Wisdom” while reading Huston Smith’s “The World Religions”. The content of the book is so rich, and the chosen translations are of the highest quality. For example, the Tao Te Ching selections are so poetic and better than any of the other translations that i had read. Each chapter covers one of the religions described in Huston Smith’s book, and highlights the major religious texts involved. It is a book that can be revisited over and over again, especially for those interested in comparative religions. I highly recommend.

I don’t think any summary of world religious literature is going to be perfect. This could get 5 stars, because there really are some good or representative samples of world religions. Or you could give it 4 or 4 and a half stars because it doesn’t have selections from Jainism or Shinto, nor from Mormonism or Bahai. But what it does cover (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Indigenous Religions) it does fairly well. I’ve looked at many different selections for world religion classes, and this one I think does the job very well. So as I’ve said, no selection is perfect, but this one of the better ones.

Purchased this book for my religion class. Overall great content from the author. My three star rating is for the kindle edition glitching/missing numerous pages. Multiple pages show blank and it's clearly missing 2-3 page chunks at various intervals throughout the chapters. This is disappointing because I love using ebooks to hold all of my school textbooks in one place. I definitely recommend the title, just don't get the kindle version. :(

This book is great for comparative study of all major religions but I don't think it does have deep details here because only few papers is here to cover religious knowledge. Concept of God is only available in Abrahamic religions whereas it's quite absent in Dharmic religions and quite confusing when it's come to other religions other than Abrahamic. Overall great.

Bought this product for godson and goddaughter instead of the traditional bibles - they are a bit young to give feedback at present - but I thought it was a good present!

I bought this book, as it was required for one of the university courses I'm taking. It was cheaper to buy from Amazon then the university bookstore, and arrived quickly. The book itself is well written and interesting, as it provides wisdom from various world religions.

Great book and great price and got to me quickly

text book for school