Customer Reviews

The Big Book on Fencing - by Rudy Volkmann

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AS I said, this is a great text, though it could use a good rewrite for clarity and ease of reading.

While the text is great, the pictures are almost univerally shoddy. They are hard to see, and simply not printed well. That is due to this being published as a xeroxed book, not as a printed book. This is a good way to print a small-run book such as this, but the illustrations really suffer.

Regardless, the section on repair is worth the price of admission alone, and the discussion of the various stances and parries is superb. I can still recommend this book.

Mr. Volkmann does a good job of trying to explain the basics of fencing in this text. I do find it a bit disorganized at times, the parts on epee and sabre fencing are interspersed and hidden within the general foil sections. The use of french rather than english terminology can also lead one to confusion. It is a small-run book, crudely printed and bound, which takes away from its real strong suit as an armory reference. This book's best content is its detailed wiring diagrams and schematics. It even includes a plan for building a fencing dummy. Worth having in your library for that alone.