Rick Fields

Rick Fields (1942–1999) is the author of several books, including Chop Wood, Carry Water and The Code of the Warrior. He has served as the editor of The Vajradhatu Sun, an international journal of Buddhism (now Shambhala Sun), and as the editor-at-large of Tricycle: A Buddhist Review.

Ben Bogin

BENJAMIN BOGIN, a scholar of Himalayan Buddhism, is Associate Professor and Director of Asian Studies at Skidmore College. Bogin writes and teaches on the intersections of biographical literature, sacred geography, visual art, and ritual practice in Himalayan cultures. He is the author of The Illuminated Life of the Great Yolmowa and the coeditor of Himalayan Passages: Tibetan and Newar Studies in Honor of Hubert Decleer.

"Heroic in scope and of undeniable historic importance." —Los Angeles Times

"This fascinating book delivers more than it promises. It takes the reader from the origins of Buddhism right up to the immediate past, through Buddhism's growth and spread in Asia to the personalities that opened it up to the West and those that brought it to America as well as those who were affected by Buddhism or nurtured it here. Fields possesses a clear style and infectious enthusiasm for his subject." —Library Journal

"The definitive treatment of the impact of Buddhism on American thought." —Roderick Frazier Nash, Professor of History and Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

"I found this engaging book literally crammed with the sort of lively and accurate information which I had for years been longing to find assembled. The leading characters emerge with a quality of independence and individuation that certainly dispels any stereotype of the Buddhist practitioner, teacher, or layman." —Washington Post