A decent introduction to Zen and it's long history. The first few chapters are very helpful in narrowing down some broad concepts into understandable language, but it goes downhill from there. The writing is a mixture of edited Christmas Humphrey's writings on Zen - who apparently was one of the first westerners to write on the subject - and newly added text. Why Humphrey's text is necessary I'm not sure; was it not possible to find an English speaker alive who could write an introduction to Zen?
Bottom line: read it if you come across it, but there are probably better intros out there.