I have read a number of textbooks on comparative religion. Easily the best is Huston Smith's World Religions. He writes in the introduction that such textbooks often bog down in what he considered the boring details, but he wished to elucidate the major IDEAS, and to discover their common themes.
Years ago, I wrote Smith a letter, telling him that when I was 18 and a freshman at Boston University, we used his textbook. I went on to say that I was now 53, and I taught "Introduction to World Religions" at Florida State; and I had never found a textbook that even came close to his in its clarity of writing and understanding.
Smith wrote back to say, "Your letter arrived on my 90th birthday, and I could not have gotten a better birthday present!"
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