Reddit reviews Taoism: Growth of a Religion

1. I believe this question and answer answer your first question. Would you like more detail? (I am happy to provide more if you want!)
   
2. history of Daoism and/or internal alchemy - fantastic question - I wish I had someone to tell me the answer about 15 years ago! Anyway - here is a select reading list:
   
   

• Isabelle Robinet's Taoism: Growth of a Religion is perhaps the best single volume overview of the history of Daoism out there, but it only goes to the Yuan. And it is a great price.
  
  
• For later movements, or in fact the full history of Daoism - Livia Kohn's (ed) Daoism: Handbook two-volume set is fantastic, but it is ridiculously expensive due to it being an academic library reference text. But I recommend it if you are serious about learning about Daoism.
  
  
• Lastly, Livia Kohn's Introducing Daoism is an excellent overview of both the history and practice of Daoism. She is really (in my opinion) the top Daoist scholar in the the US and Europe. Her writing also happens to be readable, and Introducing Daoism is intended for a less academic audience.
  
  Mountains! Well this is my area. As I wrote elsewhere here, Mountains are an absolutely core element of Daoism. The mountain men were absorbed/co-opted by the Daoists, who took on the mantle of the classic mountain ascetics. Buddhists had their share, and in fact many mountains were shared spaces by both Daoists and Buddhists (and remain so today).
  Mountains were key elements in general chinese cosmology - they are the organs of the earth, they generate life-giving Qi - a metaphor for the minerals and water that pour out of the mountains. These qualities were enumerated and well understood by Daoists as they began developing mountain practice in the 4th-5th centuries. Mountains formed the basis of several major and minor sects, who all have a primary (and secondary and tertiary, etc) mountain. For the Shangqing Sect that was Mt. Mao.
  
  But as I also wrote elsewhere in the AMA, mountains are a key part of all daoist practice, as one does not only ascend physical mountains, but also ascends internal mountains.
  Add into this that the mountains house the cave heavens (洞天), and you have both the heights and the depths of the earth locked into Daoist geo-cosmology. The cave heavens were also real and imagined spaces. A daoist might physically travel into a cave below a mountain, but more often the daoist would simply discover the cave heaven within themselves, in meditation. The cave heavens were putatively connected to each other, forming a sacred geographical web across the entire landscape of imperial China. The mainlines of the web were between the 5 sacred peaks, the 10 greater cave heavens and the great mountains of the west, Kunlun and the east, Penglai.
  
  For common people, the physical mountains were places they would take annual pilgrimages to, a practice that millions undergo to this day at Mount Tai, the sacred peak of the East.
  But the mountains of Daoism also might enter a person's home, when a Daoist priest is called to perform a ritual at the home. There a miniature mountain is constructed by the Daoist - this kind of microcosmic sacred geography is described in detail in Rolf Stein's The World in Miniature.
  That's all I have right now, I hope it is helpful.
  

[Task] Looking for Textbook. This is it Thus Spoke Laozi. Will pay 3$ for either pdf, .mobi, or .epub