Category Archives: Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words That Burn ed. by Rudolph Amsel & Teresa Keyne

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The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words that Burn (In Two Hundred Poems)The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words that Burn by Rudolph Amsel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This is a collection that gathers 14 poems for each of 14 different themes. If you’re a math whiz, you know that means it’s a collection of 196 poems, but they round it out with four bonus poems to make a clean 200. If you’re a poetry reader, many of these poems will be familiar. They’re classic works from master poets from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries (a few earlier.) Still, they are worth revisiting, the collection is inexpensive, and the organization, itself, is thought-provoking.

The fourteen themes that create the organizational schema for the book are: 1.) rapture: words that burn, 2.) a door opens; a door closes, 3.) love, 4.) humor & curiosities, 5.) memory, 6.) nature, 7.) tales & songs, 8.) solitude, 9.) contemplation, 10.) mystery & enigma, 11.) parting & sorrow, 12.) animals, 13.) inspiration, and 14.) cities. Then there are a couple bonus poems each attached to both the introduction and the epilogue.

As mentioned, the poets are mostly household names of English-language poetry, including: Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, W.B. Yeats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Thomas Hardy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Ben Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Wordsworth, A. E. Housman, Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Frost. There are some names that are less than household names, but none that are obscure to poetry aficionados.

Again, many of the poems are well-known. Some of them are fragments of long poems, but most are stand-alone works. Examples of some of the standards include: “Chicago” by Sandburg, “If” by Kipling, “The Road Not Taken” by Frost, “Let My Country Awake” by Tagore, “The Tiger” by Blake, “The Raven” by Poe, “Kubla Khan” by Coleridge, “The Daffodils” by Wordsworth, “The Jabberwocky” by Carroll, “She Walks in Beauty” by Byron, and “There Is No Frigate Like a Book” by Dickinson.

 

I should point out that this is the first volume in a multi-volume set. There is also a second volume out, but I don’t know what the plans are beyond that.
I enjoyed this collection. I’d read most of these poems before, but the vast majority deserve re-reading and re-reading again. I’d recommend it for poetry lovers.

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BOOK REVIEW: William Blake: Selected Poems ed. Paul Butter

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Selected PoemsSelected Poems by William Blake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon doesn’t carry this edition.

So, e-Bay

Blake’s “The Tyger” is one of my favorite poems, and one of the few that I’ve bothered to memorize. Even if the words made no sense, they sound beautiful together, but not only do they make sense they forge powerful imagery. Blake wrote many poems that managed to be both pleasing to the ear and meaningful.

This collection consists of about 80 poems and fragments (of longer poems) that are pulled from Blake’s collections. Much of Blake’s work is about nature, though the worlds of man and the divine also feature prominently. With respect to the human world, poems about children are particularly common. Most of the poems and partials fit on a single page or two, but some are as short as a four-line stanza and others are as long as a dozen pages.

The compiler of the poems, Peter Butter, doesn’t feel the need to pile in rambling prologues and introductions—a plus in my opinion. The only ancillary matter consists of two timelines: one of Blake’s life, and one of with key events that happened over the course of his life. I will say that these two timelines are confusingly arranged in the edition that I read. They are two pages each, with the pages of each facing each other. So, as one flips, one reads a page of life history, one of world history, one of Blake’s history, and one of world history. Either rearrangement of pages or formatting changes would fix this right up.

This is a great little collection with which to get a taste for Blake. I’d recommend it for those who want some of his classics and some others, but without the need to wade through unabridged collection—in case he turns out to not be your cup of tea.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite lines from the collection: “Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,”

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BOOK REVIEW: The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman

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The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and DiseaseThe Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel E. Lieberman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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The story that this book tells is of a human body adapted and optimized for hunting and gathering that has been thrust by agricultural and industrial revolutions into conditions for which it is ill-suited. The central idea is that of the “mismatch disease.” The mismatch in question is a mismatch between the lives humans were evolved to lead and the ones that we have developed through cultural and technological progress. The human body is governed by what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “anti-fragility” or what biologists call “phenotypic plasticity.” Both terms say that our bodies get stronger when exposed to physical stressors and weaker in the absence of such stressors. We’ve now used culture and technology to reduce exposure to such stressors, while—at the same time—food is more available than ever and is in calorically dense / nutritionally sparse forms. This mismatch accounts for many problems. Of course, technology has also allowed us to reduce our exposure to dirt and germs, and this, after being once a boon, has begun to swing us into dangerous territory.

The 13 chapters (including the introduction) are divided into three parts in a logical manner to address the book’s objective. After an introduction that lays groundwork for understanding human evolution in a broad sense, the first part describes human evolution up to the point where culture became dominant force for our species. It clarifies how we became bipedal, how our diets developed, how we got smart, and the ways in which the aforementioned characteristics are interconnected. The second part shifts from Darwinian evolution to cultural evolution, and—in particular—elucidates the effects that the agricultural and industrial revolutions had on the human body. These cultural forces act much faster than evolution. While some argue that humans aren’t really subject to evolutionary forces anymore, owing to cultural and technological advances, Lieberman points out that Darwinian evolution does still effect humanity, but its effect is muted by comparison to fast-acting cultural developments. The final part looks at humanity in the present and projects out into the future. It considers what effect an over-abundance of energy and a declining need for physical activity have had on our species, and what can be done about it.

This book is thought-provoking, well-organized, and uses narrative evidence and humor to enhance readability. (A discussion of the absurdity of products in the Skymall catalog—e.g. luxury items for pet—is a case in point.) It certainly gives on a good education about human evolution. Furthermore, while there are many books out there that deal with mismatch as a cause of diseases like obesity and diabetes, Lieberman also addresses under-explored issues like postural problems from chairs, the influence of shoes on running gait, and the development of nearsightedness because of our close-focusing ways.

I’d say the book’s greatest flaw comes in its discussions of solutions at the end. The author puts all his eggs in the basket of wholesale solutions aimed to make society as a whole improve, while he could do more to share the details of what individuals can do to solve their own problems. Lieberman considers why natural selection won’t solve problems of mismatch and dysevolution. Then he considers how research and development and educational campaigns can only provide partial solutions. His ultimate solution is suggesting regulatory paternalism—e.g. what economists call Pigovian taxes–taxes designed to change behavior by making bad behavior (in this case sedentary lifestyles and over-eating / malnutrition) more expensive. Perhaps such solutions (which will remain political untenable for the foreseeable future in the US, at least) may be necessary, but one shouldn’t conclude that readers with better information and ways of approaching the problem can’t make a difference. I say this based upon the fact that a substantial (if minority) portion of the population is already doing the right thing—eating right, exercising, and not succumbing to modernity’s creature comforts. I, furthermore, say it as a one trained as an economist who has seen easier attempts at paternalism fail over and over again.

I’d recommend this book. I think it gives the reader insight into the problems caused by being evolved to be one thing while being groomed by culture to be another.

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BOOK REVIEW: Missing Microbes by Martin J. Blaser, MD

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Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern PlaguesMissing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues by Martin J. Blaser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This is one of several popular human biology books of recent years to take note of the fact that your body’s cells are outnumbered 10 to 1 by the bacteria that live in and on you—mostly in your digestive tract—and that our penchant for killing microbes has begun to show signs of harm as well as good. Since the germ theory took hold, we’ve been slaughtering all the little buggers we could, but increasingly we’ve learned that this isn’t without costs. In essence, we’ve been throwing out the baby with the bath water when it comes to our bacteria, while at the same time creating super-bugs.

As a first-worlder who’s been living in the developing world (India), I sometimes get ask if I get sick here a lot or at all. My stock response is to ask the asker whether they have Crohn’s Disease, IBS, Type II diabetes*, or any of the other diseases of affluence seen mostly in the first world. (*Type II diabetes is becoming much more prevalent in the developing world, notably in India where they like their deserts about 9000 times sweeter than, say, a fudge brownie. Furthermore, the disease has disproportionate effects in such countries because of limited treatment availability and late diagnosis.) In many cases, these developed world diseases are being tied to the killing off of our good gut bacteria.

Doctor Blaser’s book focuses on how overuse of antibiotics creates problems. For those who say, “I don’t get no stinkin’ antibiotics when I’m sick. I just suffer it out. Ergo, I don’t need to read this book,” there remain facts of which you should be aware. One such fact is that some of the antibiotics injected into the animals that become our food can act against our own personal microbiome. Yet another is that antibacterial soaps and gels are ubiquitous. Furthermore, the increased popularity of C-sections has starved infants of a source of good bacteria, and made them more prone to certain childhood illnesses.

“Missing Microbes” is organized into 16 chapters. The first discusses many of the “modern plagues” that have come about through the wholesale war on bacteria. The next couple chapters look at the role of microbes on the planet and in our bodies. There is a discussion of increasingly successful pathogens as well as the drugs that came along to take care of them. There is a discussion of over-prescription of antibiotics by dentists and doctors, their use in agriculture, and the transfer of good bacteria from mother to child and how rampant use of C-section negates this transfer. There are a couple of chapters on H. pylori and the lessons learned from trying to eliminate it after it became tied to ulcers. (In one of the most famous stories in modern medicine, a researcher swallowed a beaker of H. pylori to prove his theory to a skeptical audience of physicians.) Asthma is discussed as an example of an illness one might not expect to come about from destroying gut bacteria. One of the effects covered over two chapters is getting bigger (re: fatter as well as taller.) Staving off disease under crowded conditions isn’t the only reason modern agriculture uses antibiotics, it also makes for big, meaty animals—which when eaten by people may make big, meaty (actually, fatty) humans. Blaser then talks about how bad the situation might get (using the term “antibiotic winter,”) before discussing solutions. It’s, of course, true that humanity has gained a lot from antibiotics, and so putting the genie back in the bottle is not a solution. A nuanced approach is called for, and that’s what the author discusses.

I found this book to be informative, and would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the risks presented by overuse of antibiotics.

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BOOK REVIEW: Yoga Assists by Sharon Gannon and David Life

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Yoga Assists: A Complete Visual and Inspirational Guide to Yoga Asana AssistsYoga Assists: A Complete Visual and Inspirational Guide to Yoga Asana Assists by Sharon Gannon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an illustrated guide to making yoga assists, or what are often called corrections or adjustments. The style is Jivamukti Yoga, and the book is written by its founders. The postures will be familiar to practitioners of any form of Hatha Yoga, but the action of the teacher (or assistee) may be quite unlike what one is used to.

This book offers some valuable information for any teacher of yoga, though many—probably most—will find the overall approach unsuitable. (If it is suitable, more power to you; you’ll want to read and re-read this book.) However, even if you’re not likely to use this style of teaching, there’s worthwhile technical information to be gained.

I’ll explain why this won’t be everybody’s cup of tea. First, many of the assists are highly invasive, by that I mean they involve being at an intimate distance with the student for an extended period of time. If you primarily teach experienced students who know and trust you, these invasive assists may be helpful. However, if you’re teaching beginners in studio sessions, one may need to be selective about what one uses and what one doesn’t. The ultimate goal is “chitta vritti nirodhah” (calming mental turbulence) and not to contort the student’s body into a perfect version of the posture. If, instead of facilitating the student’s look inward, you make them feel awkward and self-conscious, you’ve missed the mark. If everybody in question has achieved a monkish state of mind, this won’t be an issue, but history (and many a lawsuit) suggests that this is often not the case.

The second issue follows from the discussion above. By manipulating the student toward some objectively perfect version of the posture, you may encourage them to think that is important—that it’s important to you and that it should be important to them. This may have adverse ramifications such as driving away students who are far from the perfect expression of the pose or making it difficult for them to internalize santosha (contentment with where one is presently.) Being so hands-on may be at odds with one’s philosophy. Not only does it discourage contentment and gradually advancement toward better form, it also detracts from the notion that it’s about the student looking inward. (In other words, so much hands-on assistance thrusts the teacher onto the spotlight of what should as much as possible be the student’s private time and space.) Corrections are needed to avert injuries and to help the student improve, but this level of contact is more intense than required for those goals.

Still, I found this to be an informative and worthwhile read. It’s not every assist in the book that is invasive, and the ones that are still have their use with students with whom one has built trust and rapport, and particularly in workshop settings. The assists are optimized to be stable and safe, which is why they are often close and handsy—at least for those of us who were taught to start with verbal instruction, move to non-touching gestural instruction, and—only when necessary–put hands on the student (and then with care to be at an angle so as to not make the student uncomfortable.) Overall, the book does a fine job of presenting the necessary information.

The authors use both photographs and line drawn diagrams to convey the details of the assists. The organization is logical. After a section of general background, the book proceeds through poses using the standard groupings with which Hatha teachers will be acquainted (standing, forward bends, twists, back bends, inversions, and relaxation poses.) There is textual explanation in a form consistent from one asana (posture) to the next to support the graphics. The poses are the most common of the classic asana, and they cover a good number of the basics that one will teach in classes. They also provide some insight into how to apply the same principles to intermediate and advanced poses that aren’t included.

The book does have its faults. One of them is to wedge in irrelevant information. This can be seen from the get-go with an introductory “Go Vegan” rant. There’s also a bit of a tendency to muddle science with pseudo-science, but all that matters for the most part is basic anatomy–and that’s handled well enough. This isn’t so much criticism as forewarning, but you may find some of the commentary to be like those YouTube parodies of yoga classes—you know the ones that are hilariously far out. But just occasionally.

I’d recommend this book for yoga teachers or intermediate / advanced students who want to increase their understanding of alignment.

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BOOK REVIEW: Kokoro Yoga by Mark Divine

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Kokoro Yoga: Maximize Your Human Potential and Develop the Spirit of a Warrior--the SEALfit WayKokoro Yoga: Maximize Your Human Potential and Develop the Spirit of a Warrior–the SEALfit Way by Mark Divine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Like many yoga practitioners, I’m never sure whether to be dismayed, amused, or pleased by the explosion of new styles of yoga. It’s nothing new. Yoga has been branching out since its early days. But today’s flavors tend toward the frivolous, usually involve shoving yoga together with something else generally likable, and said two things are in some cases largely inconsistent. There’s marijuana yoga, dog yoga, karaoke yoga, and tantrum yoga. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Häagen-Dazs Yoga. Hell, if I was a bit less lazy and more unscrupulous I’d have made a mint from my patented SELFIE YOGA (™ -pending), which involves modifying impressive looking poses so that an individual can take their own pics for FaceBook. (You’re welcome; to whomever the driven sleeze-bag is that turns that idea into a thing.)

I, therefore, tend to approach books like Mark Divine’s “Kokoro Yoga” with a measure of skepticism. That said, I found that this book offered a respectable vision of yoga that might even succeed in bringing a new demographic into the fold. Divine is a former Navy SEAL who developed a fitness empire called SEALFIT, a system that combines fitness ideas from the famous Special Operations unit with ideas from civilian sports and exercise science, such as high intensity interval training (HIIT.)

Incidentally, “kokoro” is the Japanese word for heart / mind (heart and mind were inexorably entwined for Japanese in the era in which the term came into being.) Divine mentions that “Warrior Yoga” would have been his first choice, but that was already taken. The author appeals to warriors with this approach to yoga. He does this in several ways. Firstly, and encouragingly, he doesn’t neglect the mind, but rather puts it front and center by emphasizing the need for mental strength and clarity. My biggest problem with the plethora of new yogas is that they usually forget that it’s ultimately about calming the mind, and instead of providing an environment conducive to looking inward, they embrace or create all sorts of distractions (loud pop music, mirrors everywhere, nudity, animals, ice cream, circus clowns, etc.) Divine doesn’t just make a new fitness fad, he argues for the need for all of the eight limbs of yoga—not neglecting yama and niyama—and emphasizes how yoga served as a calming and clarifying tool for him and not just as a means to be more bendy.

Second, he adds components to balance out the dimensions of fitness. If you are a yogi / yogini, and you want a yoga body; yoga is all you need. However, if you are a martial artist, cop, or soldier, you also need strength, speed (then, by definition, power), and cardiovascular endurance, as well as those aspects yoga offers (e.g. breath control, flexibility, core strength, posture, and mental clarity.) Again, I’m often dismayed by attempts to round out yoga with functional strength building and cardiovascular endurance. I understand the desire to combine them into one workout. Besides the fact that some people need a more balanced approach to fitness, not everybody has time to do multiple workouts multiple times a day. Still, one can’t just ram these components together willy-nilly because if one needs to be in a space to observe one’s breath while being still and one is coming out of having done 100 burpees, it’s probably not going to work so well. I haven’t yet done any of the sequences from the book, but it looks like this shouldn’t a problem, at least not for individuals who are moderately fit. I’m less confident about the value of mixing in elements of chi gong and “cardio kickboxing,” which is suggested by the system. It’s certainly not that I’m opposed to either chi gong or functional martial arts training, but there’s a lot of important detail in those activities and this format risks some horrible half-assery. (Yes, sometimes you get chocolate in peanut butter and get a Reese’s cup, but more often you get sausage in the pudding. Two things being great, by no means ensures they will be great together.)

Finally, Divine puts his approach in the language of soldiers, using concepts like “strategy” and “tactics” and eschewing Sanskrit terminology. The book begins with an anecdote about going into a combat zone as a Reserve officer, which describes his use of yoga to help him get his mind in the right place. He also talks extensively about his practice of martial arts.

There are eight chapters and three appendices to the book. They proceed from the aforementioned story through a look at the general approach, looking at the eight limbs of yoga, before getting into the details. The penultimate chapter sums up research on some of the benefits of yoga, and the last chapter offers advice about how to set up one’s sadhana (personal practice) with the Kokoro Yoga approach in mind. The appendices offer information about functional conditioning exercises, combat conditioning, and module building.

Overall, I think this is a useful book that provides some interesting thoughts on yoga. You may or may not find that it’s the approach for you, but it’s worth checking out. The photos are well-done—though some readers may wish there were more related to the functional conditioning exercises (but he’s got other books for that, it seems.)

I’d recommend this book for those interested in how a yoga practice might be integrated with other aspects of fitness without losing track of the core yogic objectives.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Country With No Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali

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The Country Without a Post OfficeThe Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is a collection of 27 poems about life in conflict-riddled Kashmir. Kashmir is a territory in the Himalayas that’s governed by India, but claimed by both India and Pakistan—and, it should be noted, has a significant population of residents that want to be part of neither country. In other words, there are some who’d like to see an independent Kashmir. However, at the moment Kashmir is one portion of one of India’s 29 states, Jammu and Kashmir—a state which is, itself, tripartite (Hindu Jammu, Muslim Kashmir, and Buddhist Ladakh.)

It’s a telling quote from Tacitus with which the author begins the collection. Solitudinum faciunt et pacem appellant. I won’t claim that I didn’t have to look this up, but it means: “They make a desert, and call it peace.” The first poem echoes variations on that quote.

There are a range of poetry styles within this collection, including: rhyming verse, free verse, poetic prose, and ghazal. A ghazal is a Middle Eastern style of lyric poem which has a pattern of rhyme and is metered to be set to music; there are several in this collection. Some of the poems are sparse and some are wordy, and variety is the order of the day.

The 27 poems of this collection are divided among five parts. The book is brief (under 100 pages), and it contains only a prologue and notes (some of which are interesting) with respect to ancillary matter.

This collection paints a portrait of war and life in a war-torn locale. It’s as much the latter as the former. The title poem, “The Country With No Post Office,” suggests the sapping nature of life where the institutions of governance and civil society have broken down.

I’d recommend this collection for those who enjoy poetry, but also for those interested in the conflict in Kashmir.

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BOOK REVIEW: Love Alone by Paul Monette

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Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for RogLove Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog by Paul Monette
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This is a collection of modern verse offering the poet’s experience of the death of his partner and the years leading up to it. Said partner, Roger Horwitz, succumbed to AIDS during the late 80’s. It’s a tale of scouring and worrying—scouring because any infection could be fatal and worrying for the same reason. It tells of melancholy holidays, exhausting doctor’s office visits, and then the mourning. If I make it sound like Monette just jotted off about the mundane aspects of life, it’s this approach that captures the grind of the disease. This approach both creates a narrative and shows how life looks in the shadow of a terminal disease.

As the subtitle suggests, there are 18 poems in this collection. They are divided into three parts, though most are in the first part.

I found the collection to be evocative and the language to be clever.

This is a brief review because it’s a brief work—as one might expect of a poetry collection. It’s less than 70 pages inclusive of front matter and a biography of the author.

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BOOK REVIEW: Krav Maga: Real World Solutions to Real World Violence by Gershon Ben Keren

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Krav Maga: Real World Solutions to Real World ViolenceKrav Maga: Real World Solutions to Real World Violence by Gershon Keren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This is a comprehensive guide to the Krav Maga Yashir style of Krav Maga. The fact that there are multiple styles of Krav Maga was news to me. Yashir means “straight” or “direct” and this system was founded by the book’s author, Gershon Ben Keren, drawing heavily upon Imi Lichtenfeld’s original program, but modified to make it relevant for a modern, civilian practitioner. (To offer an example of said modification, Lichtenfeld’s system presumed that the fighter was an infantryman with a pack on his back, and so the original Krav Maga avoided movements that would be hazardous when so loaded down, but that are feasible for the average civilian on the street.) The author has a scholarly background in the psychology of violence, and emphasis on the realities of violence is a recurring theme.

The book follows a typical format for martial arts books. The early pages discuss the philosophy and approach of the system in detail. The book then proceeds to discuss basics such as stance and the fundamentals of punching and kicking. Finally, it delves into progressively more challenging self-defense scenarios (unarmed, armed, multiple attacker, and from various directions) and the counters that the system offers.

The book succeeds in its objectives. The photographs are well-done and provide the requisite clarity. One particularly nice feature is that the scenario photographs are taken in realistic settings so as to reinforce the importance of recognizing and using one’s environment. Key concepts are reiterated throughout so as to facilitate learning. The organization is systematic and builds logically through progressively more challenging situations.

The biggest criticism is of some of the book’s repetitiveness. Repetitiveness is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be an important tool for learning, particularly with ideas that need to be thoroughly ingrained—e.g. self-defense concepts. However, some of the repetition in this book is more wasteful than beneficial. The scenario sections feature a textual description of the attack / defense event, and then there’re captioned photos that visually portray how the scenario plays out. The captions repeat much of the text, and they do it so close to the original text that it’s hard to imagine it being much more than an annoyance.

I’d recommend this book for someone who is considering whether to take Krav Maga classes, or for martial artists looking for insight in to the nature of this system. It has some sound general advice on self-defense that those interested in that topic might find useful.

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BOOK REVIEW: Imi Lichtenfeld: The Grandmaster of Krav Maga by Gaetano Lo Presti

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Imi Lichtenfeld - The Grand Master of Krav MagaImi Lichtenfeld – The Grand Master of Krav Maga by Gaetano Lo Presti
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

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I bought this book because it’s the only English language biography of Imi Lichtenfeld (a.k.a. Imrich Sde-Or) that I could find, and by all accounts the man led a fascinating life. Lichtenfeld is most famous for founding the Israeli martial art known as Krav Maga. For those unfamiliar, Krav Maga is a self-defense system that prides itself on using as much of the human body’s natural instinct as possible in defense. It eschews the fancy and unrealistic techniques widely found in martial arts in favor of simple and direct tactics. However, it’s not the founding of Krav Maga that makes Lichtenfeld’s life so intriguing. (Believe me, there are plenty of founders of martial arts whose lives would less than engrossing reads.) Lichtenfeld was also a Holocaust survivor / resistance fighter, a circus performer, and a skilled athlete.

The good news for biographers is that there is still plenty of room for a bestselling biography of this man. There are two major problems with this book. I should point out that both problems result from the fact that this book is written by an apparently dedicated student of Krav Maga, and not by a professional writer, a biographer, or a master of creative nonfiction. I suspect the author did as good a job as he could, given that a proper primary source-based biography would take over a person’s life, is an art and science that must be learned, and—unfortunately—a lot of sources are now deceased / destroyed.

Anyway, back to the problems: First, it’s a translation that seems to have been done without the help of a translator or editor with native English competency. In fact, some of it reads like it was put through Babel Fish or Google Translate. As far as I know, the original Italian edition maybe a brilliantly written, if brief, biographical outline of Lictenfeld’s life. Second, the book is an outline of Lichtenfeld’s life, and it doesn’t offer enough detail to give the reader the visceral reading experience that learning about this man’s life should have been. There’s no in-depth research of the dramatic events in which Lichtenfeld was involved. Contrary to popular advice on writing, the author tells–not shows.

The book is actually a short biographical sketch of Lichtenfeld, followed by what might be considered a “biography” of Krav Maga, and that is followed by bio-blurbs of some of the more well-regarded students of Lichtenfeld.

On the positive side, the book is a cheap and quick read. It will give one some insight into Lichtenfeld, but—I fear—will leave many readers with a craving to know more. I wouldn’t recommend it for someone who wants a biography of Lichtenfeld, but, if you’re looking for a biographical sketch or are interested in the lives of prominent martial artists, it will probably serve your purpose.

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