The Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha or Review of the Different Systems of Hindu Philosophy - E. B. Co... Book

I got this as a gift—from my mother, I think, and well-meaning I'm sure regardless—and it took me years to slog my way through it because, despite my love for philosophy and my desire to get a better overview of it from ancient Greece to today, I just plain didn't like this.

It is, in fact, a reasonably digestible overview of the entire history of Western philosophy in a mere 192 pages, so of course it's going to leave important bits out, and reduce everything—including major concepts and people—to at most a couple or three pages of touchstones, definitions, context, and maybe occasional bio, in an entirely superficial manner. That's the only way to cover what amounts to 15 years per page. And it does that, so it's a fairly acceptable starting point, especially for people who like brevity or clip-art, or who are easily distracted.

Nevertheless, as others note, the author spends great swaths of his precious ink on thinly-veiled axe-grinding polemic. In the end, he appears to consider everything from Socrates on to have been a giant diversion and mostly a waste of time, if not an outright catastrophe. It's one thing to come to that conclusion (though I maintain that he's wrong); it's another thing to spend 120 pages relentlessly and pejoratively foreshadowing it.

But I gotta give him credit for facing down a monumental task and completing it somewhat successfully, so two stars instead of one.