God of the Dao: Lord Lao in History and Myth

Livia Kohn's God of the Dao, Lord Lao in History and Myth, published by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in 1998, is a scholarly study tracing the deification of Laozi as Lord Lao across the history of Daoist religion, from his role as a sage philosopher in early texts to his standing as a major cosmic deity in later organized Daoism. Kohn is a specialist in Daoist studies working from the primary Daoist textual corpus across a very long historical span. Its strength is that comprehensive, primary source based tracing of a single figure's religious development over roughly two millennia. Its limit is the scale of that span itself: compressing so long and regionally varied a development means individual local or sectarian variations in how Lord Lao was understood receive less depth than a narrower, period specific study could offer.