REVIEWS

I would like to preface this review with a tribute to Minor Rogers, whose untimely death in August 1991 took from us not only our most knowledge able scholar of Rennyo in the U.S. but also a truly exemplary individual—or, in Shin Buddhist parlance, a mydkdnin. This book is his scholarly legacy to us, the culmination and distillation of more than twenty years of research. Rogers produced this book in collaboration with his very able and talent ed wife, Ann, who was the translator of Rennyo’s letters, occupying the mid dle section of the volume, as well as the author of other passages in the book. As a reflection of their collaboration, first-person plural pronouns are used whenever scholarly observations are made. The book is structured around the questions and assumptions that Minor Rogers articulated throughout his scholarly life, and anyone who has read his other writings will immediately detect his guiding voice. This work represents his most comprehensive expo sition of how he saw Rennyo. Two figures loom large in the development of Shin Buddhism: Shinra