Addiss and Lombardo’s rendering of the TAO TE CHING gets you right down into the primary source, and from there you’re free to wander where you will.

With this edition of the TAO TE CHING, an unlikely team of a Japanese art expert and a Greek translator pull off a uniquely powerful version of the text. If one thing marks the language of the original TAO TE CHING, it is linguistic spareness. Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo are the first to succeed in duplicating the language in English, and although their search for just the right word occasionally goes far afield, they are mostly successful. The effect can be quite liberating as the full ambiguity of meaning comes through and you are afforded the freedom to interpret in a variety of ways. The translators also enhance the atmosphere of the book with Addiss’s expressive calligraphy and the two lines in the original Chinese that are retained in each chapter. Addiss and Lombardo’s rendering of the TAO TE CHING gets you right down into the primary source, and from there you’re free to wander where you will.