Book for all disciplines
I received this book as a gift when I was studying Karate at age 17. It laid the foundation for a grounded understanding of the rich martial arts traditions in all the original disciplines. I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys the many martial arts and/or is training, especially for young practitioners. Author, Peter Urban is now gone but he researched and breathed life into the stories of MA contained here. Both fictional AND real life legends come alive. Men like Gogen Yamaguchi, founder of hard-soft style of Karate and Mas Oyama whose exploits are almost science fiction. This book had the first published account of the legendary ritual of the Shao-Lin monastery which was lifted by Hollywood script-writers to become the premise for the long running series, "Kung Fu". I am buying this book again to give to a young man, 13 years old, whom I just met. His mother told me he is studying MMA and I think he will enjoy reading this book as I did and making it a permanent part of his martial arts library as it still is for mine!
