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Rating: 
Summary: An essential bring-along for the ZMM
Review: For fans of ZMM, this is an incredible book that summarizes various aspects of the ZMM book. First and foremost, it gives you the necessary background on philosophy to get a better understanding of where the Pirsig is coming from.Secondly, it is great studying material for those of us who're interested in getting deeper into the issues that Pirsig gets to in the ZMM. Particularly, I liked the section in this book that relates Quality with Taoist principles. A must have! It can be read without reading ZMM, BTW.
Rating:
Summary: An essential bring-along for the ZMM
Review: For fans of ZMM, this is an incredible book that summarizes various aspects of the ZMM book. First and foremost, it gives you the necessary background on philosophy to get a better understanding of where the Pirsig is coming from. Secondly, it is great studying material for those of us who're interested in getting deeper into the issues that Pirsig gets to in the ZMM. Particularly, I liked the section in this book that relates Quality with Taoist principles. A must have! It can be read without reading ZMM, BTW.
Rating: 
Summary: Helpful
Review: The inclusion of edited material from ZAMM was welcome. I found I was distracted when I was actually reading ZAMM andreferencing the guidebook. My suggestion - read ZAMM completely then refer to the guidebook to explore a section more deeply. The reviews of ZAMM were of passing interest, from the early reviews published after the book's release to later ones and their criticism.
I'm not a deeply devout person of any given persuasion, so the religious comparisons and references were of lesser importance. I think they would be helpful if one were looking to delve deeper into Buddhism or other philosophy. This Guidebook DID ADD to my overall understanding and enjoyment of ZAMM.
Rating:
Summary: A decent book -- in its own right as well, btw.
Review: This is a high-level overview of related to the ZMM philosophical material, fairly interesting both as a commentary to the book itself and by itself, as a means of general edification. Part of this book is an extensive bibliography that can be resorted to to in order to go beyond the information in the book itself. The page-by-page commentaries and fragments of the original manuscript lost in editing are interesting too. One section of the book that I found unnecessary was reprints of the ZMM reviews in the press, not much of interest there. All in all, a very curious book, if you've read the ZMM itself, you'll like this one too. And btw, even though I did read the ZMM, I did not like it, I found it artificially obfuscated, pompous even, with too many literary tricks at the expense of the original thought. What I'm getting at is that the "Guidebook..." is still interesting to read, whether you liked the ZMM or not, or even read it at all.
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