This is a VERY in-depth scholarly overview of some selected Daoist texts including the Daode Jing. I certainly appreciate Komjathy's thoroughness and I think his translations are excellent, but it's definitely not light reading. Additionally, some of the introductory sections to the individual texts repeated the initial introduction to the entire book--I see why he did this, but for this reason, I would not recommend reading this book cover-to-cover. Read the texts first and then read the introductions to the texts so that they make more sense afterwards. I found myself itching to read the actual text while wading through 20-30 pages of introductions and notes, so reading the texts first might alleviate that feeling a bit.