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I'm not at home, which means I don't have any of my books, so this will be unsourced...

but

I think it comes because plenty of relatively famous Confucianists made some pretty wildly stupid policy proposals. One of the ones in mencius and then again by some neo-confucianists in the Song (I think?) dynasty was to abolish the imperial system and reinstitute a feudal (ie based off of Zhou-era feudal practices) system, which was a complete and total disaster when anyone was idiotic enough to try.

Like, this was a really monumentally stupid idea. If the Song era neo-Confucians had their policies implemented... There are so many people with huge stakes in the empire that any attempt at instantly pushing this kind of reform is pretty much guaranteed to lead to civil war. Even if you win, the feudal system was a bit of a mess and led into the warring states, I'm not really sure how this isn't going to be repeated. Either you keep enough control over your zhuhou/governors that it is still the empire, or you don't, they start fighting, and after another unnecessary civil war the winner reestablishes the empire anyways. (I think I kinda got this take from a book called something like 'End of Empire' (帝国的终结）, but I idk for sure)

They thought this would be a good idea because of a rather misguided view of the early Zhou dynasty being some sort of utopia, and the decline in li/rise of greed/[insert whatever you want to show is good/bad here] led to the current corrupted state. They also had various silly ideas how to rule: if a ruler simply set a proper moral example and helping the people, then everyone will follow, establishing music/rituals and being just like Yao and Shun will make everything perfect, etc.

The bureaucrats who actually ran the empire tended to ignore nonsense like this and were somewhat more practical, despite mostly being Confucians (depending on the era).

back to
>When did Confucius get the reputation of a practically ineffective politician who is remembered more by chance than through any well-deserved admiration? I feel like this is something I've been seeing more of lately...

Confucius is about far more than just how to run a state (unlike, say, legalism :P), so I don't know why people would let this color their entire view of Confucianism. Also, some parts of it did work fairly well, the civil examination system etc. probably should be seen as a huge Confucian administrative successes, considering the era... Maybe the bureaucracy as a whole, although that depends how much you think the whole 'confucianism on the outside, legalism on the inside' thing is true.

So I think this is true to a degree, but shouldn't give you a totally negative image of him?

but take this with a grain of salt because:

1. This is purely off of memory and unsourced
   
   
2. i think the general acceptance of mencius over xunzi was a mistake and led to a lot of stuff like this, and some degree of legalist ideas are necessary when running a state (which are both definitely debatable), so I'm just a little bit biased :P
   
   As for book, we probably should have a section of Confucianism in the useful link section >_> Unfortunately, most of my reading has been in Chinese, and I don't have any of my books with me, but Sources of Chinese Tradition is a pretty good overview of primary sources up to modern times, a lot of which can be hard to find in English. As it is mostly primary sources though, and context/analysis is really important... I can try to find more after I'm back home, if you want?
   
   Also, this translation of Xunzi is really, really good. But, primary sources, blah, blah, blah.
   
   This is a lot, but hopefully answers your question?

Then I recommend this book

It's very basic and introductory. It goes over the early history and briefly discusses the three major divisions of Buddhism; how they developed historically and in relation to each other. It might not answer all the questions you're looking for but it's a good place to start.

Just skimmed some of your other questions and the classic mistake most westerners make is to assume that it's an "atheistic" religion in the sense that nothing supernatural happens in it. Sometimes you'll see it described as "nontheistic" to distunguish that their relationship to gods is a bit different from western religions, but things like spirit possession, supernatural powers, and god-like things exist to different degrees in different Buddhist schools. It is very much a religion, don't let anyone tell you it's "more like a philosophy".

Thanks again for putting that together. Forgive me if I've said this before, but it might be worthwhile to add the works of Prof. Stephen Bokenkamp, such as

• "Early Daoist Scriptures" (1997) which includes an original translation of the Xiang'er
  
  
• "Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China" (2009) great stuff in the intertwining with Buddhism
  
  
• "Book Review: A Brush with the Spur: Robert Joe Cutter on the Chinese Cockfight"
  Review by: Stephen R. Bokenkamp
  Journal of the American Oriental Society
  Vol. 113, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1993), pp. 444-449
  
  

http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Yoda-Based-Upon-Ching/dp/0983309922/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1458380046&sr=8-2&keywords=the+dharma+of+star+wars

Bonus!

I've seen variants of the story with the "man" replaced by "angel", for some reason. To be exact, it was here.

Same book (which is otherwise wonderfully written, refreshingly non-judgmental and such) also says Buddha's teaching was devoid of the supernatural and traditions, even though reading other parts of the book carefully already contradict this.

I just want to share that there is a delightful book on the history of early (5-700s) Christianity in China which did a lot of mixing with Taoism entitled The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity by Martin Palmer. The teachings are about as bizarre as you would expect but it happened quite organically over a couple of hundred years until it was stamped out by a Confucian court.

www.amazon.com/Roaring-Stream-Reader-Ecco-Companions/dp/088001511X

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