Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples.

By Paul David Numrich. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1996. xxiv + 181 pp. Illustrations, diagrams, tables, notes, bibliography and index. $22.50.

This book breaks new ground in a number of ways. Most previous studies of the experience of Asian immigrants have ignored (or at least minimized) the religious factor, due in large part to the Marxist-oriented and socially activist context within which the field of Asian American Studies was born. Previous publications on Buddhism in North America, by contrast, have largely elided the experience of Asian Americans, privileging instead the meditation-centered Buddhism of first-generation, mostly Caucasian, converts. Finally, there have been no studies at all of the interactions between Asian and non-Asian Buddhists. In all of these respects this book moves well beyond the bounds of previous scholarship; it is a …