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If you get it please be sure to let us know your thoughts. I don't remember reading myself.
It's an exceptional resource. It also may not be the best resource for new students.
As an academic text, The Handbook is organized as a collection of essays from respected scholars. In total (in over 800 pages), they present a synoptic view of Epicurean Philosophy; in particular, each focuses on a specific topic; some of those topics are much more narrow in scope than other overviews. Sometimes, the topics covered express interpretative disagreements in contemporary scholarship; in these cases, a background in the philosophy may be assumed by the author.
I think that students may struggle with the presentation — for example, depending on the author, and the author's voice, they may, or may not assume that you already know ancient Greek, or may or may not employ non-standard, in-text citations, or may over-use academic jargon, so I anticipate that some of the essays might strike new readers as being (understandably) obfusticating. Some of the topics are tangential, and inter-disciplinary, so I think of The Handbook as more of a supplement.
Still, each essay is filled with great information. The book is expansive, and the authors, as one would expect of academics, provide voluminous support for their analyses. You'll also find a wealth of peripheral, historical information as it relates to non-Epicureans, and modern philsophers.
It's also chunky enough that it stands up on its own on a bookshelf.
It's an exceptional resource.
I second that. It was one of the first books on Epicurean philosophy I've read and to this day I don't regret it. The amount of information there is extraordinary.
