Buddhism in the United States is often viewed in connection with practitioners in the Northeast and on the West Coast; but in fact; it has been spreading and evolving throughout the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. In Dixie Dharma; Jeff Wilson argues that region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism. Through the lens of a multidenominational Buddhist temple in Richmond; Virginia; Wilson explores how Buddhists are adapting to life in the conservative evangelical Christian culture of the South; and how traditional Southerners are adjusting to these newer members on the religious landscape. Introducing a host of overlooked characters; including Buddhist circuit riders; modernist Pure Land priests; and pluralistic Buddhists; Wilson shows how regional specificity manifests itself through such practices as meditation vigils to heal the wounds of the slave trade. He argues that southern Buddhists at once use bodily practices; iconography; and meditation tools to enact distinct sectarian identities even as they enjoy a creative hybridity.
#816873 in Books The University of North Carolina Press 2005-04-11Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 1.59 x 6.48 x 9.54l; 2.04 #File Name: 0807829218552 pages
Review
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Retreat from Gettysburg is an advance in Civil War ScholarshipBy C. M MillsRetreat from Gettysburg is an excellent account of the retreat of Robert E Lee's beaten but not despairing Army of Northern Virginia from Pennsylvania to Virginia in July 1863. This gallant army lost 28;000 casulaties and was bested on thefield by Meade's Army of the Potomac in the Civil War's mostfamous battle: Gettysburg (July 103); As Brown elucidates a fighting retreat is a difficult achievement for an army calling on the best of soldiers and commanders. Lee and the ANVA retreated with thousands of wounded men being tortured in wagons; thousands of slaves; captured livestock and Union prisoners all made the journey from the field of bloody hell to relative safety on the southern shore of the Potomac reached on July 14th. Lee's campaign enabled the starving Confederate army to be fed and have their animals fed enabling them to fight again another day. But what a cost! Lee was never able to replace his fallen warrors. The Southern cause would not receive foreign money andsupport (the British had banned slavery and would never support a southern slavocracy); Of all the dozens of books I own on Gettysburg this book is the only one dealing with the retreat. Brown quotes extensively from diaries and memoirs penned by participants in the campaign.His book includes pictures and is well written in a popular style easy to read. Without a thorough understanding of the retreat the student of the Civil War will never understan the Gettysburg campaign. Kudos to Brown. One hopes this book will win him a deserved wide readership appealing to Civil War buff as well as the general reader. Excellent work!2 of 3 people found the following review helpful. A great narrative of an ignored episode and a masterful study of army logisticsBy A. FonteyneK.M.Brown has spent 20 years collecting and exploiting historical material for this groundbreaking study of Lee's retreat from Gettysburg. His bibliography fills 30 pages; as opposed to 390 pages of text.The result of his efforts is an excellent day by day narrative with an immense wealth of detail that keeps the reader hooked from beginning to end. He is extremely good in his description of the whole logistical operation to move Lee's endless wagon trains back from Pennsylvania; with the thousands of wounded soldiers and the huge amount of supplies and farm animals collected in enemy territory. And that with the Union army a few miles behind; an army with its own logistical nightmare to solve. He masterfully shows how the movement of the fighting troops is conditioned by that of the trains and by the capacity and condition of the road network; bridges; and the weather. He also shows how Lee executed his retreat flawlessly and managed to restore the balance of power that had been broken by the defeat in Gettysburg. Meade was unable to exploit his victory and let Lee's army escape; also because to catch up with Lee at Gettysburg on July 2; he had to leave the army's wagons far behind. The Army of the Potomac; after 3 days of fighting; was therefore famished and undersupplied; its men and animals exhausted.Brown shows that waging war is far more than just confronting the enemy on the battlefield; it is about planning movement of troops; keeping open an adequate supply of ammunition; food for men and animals; and "spare parts" of all kinds for the whole army. The usability of roads for the movement of troops in a pre-automobile time is also a critical aspect of the story; as the Romans very well understood.The main conclusion that K.M. Brown draws from his study is that Lee's Gettysburg campaign contained a tactical defeat; i.e he lost the main battle; but also a strategic victory; in that he escaped to fight another day and that his foraging operations allowed him to replenish his army's depleted food reserves and to replace its worn out horses and mules with fresh ones taken from the enemy. Central Virginia; where his army had been based since the beginning of the war; could no longer sustain it and by carrying the war into enemy terrory and impressing local resources; Lee managed to keep his army in fighting condition until the lower Southern states' crop could be harvested.Brown is probably right; but it remains also true that Lee's army lost many of its best soldiers at Gettysburg; and that the South could not afford it; in the long run. Lee also failed to bring about the decisive victory that might have convinced the Northern people to stop the war.Brown evacuates a bit quickly the quantification of the army's losses and the failure to deliver that much needed victory; and one feels that he minimizes those aspects in order to make his own argument stronger.But this slight "problem" does not otherwise affect the outstanding quality of his work and the disproportionate contribution it makes to the study of the Gettysburg campaign. Another strength of his book are the supporting maps that actually allow the reader to follow the story.That is not often the case with military history books.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Lee's escape from defeat at Gettysburg and Meade's armyBy JOHN BENNETTThis book is for those who are deeply into the Civil War. Lots of maps on the helpful detailed routes of Lee's retreat. Way too many names of the cast the South's famous and less so. But nowhere else do you get a sense of Lee extracted his army and the skill with which it was done under very difficult circumstances--hunger; thirst; many wounded; and the constant Yankee threat. The one lack is an explanation for the failure of Meade to locate the retreating Reb forces and take effective measures to attack them. Until a Yankee rewrites this story; however; Brown's work will be the main reference.
