Customer Reviews

Conceptual Self-Defense

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This is a self defence book aimed at women, although this is not apparent from the back cover or description of the book. Naturally, the advise given in the book are applicable to men as well, but they relate more to women. It is a good thing that there are books around that concentrate on self defence for women, but that fact does not make this a good book.

The advise given in this book is very basic in nature, and you probably have already read it somewhere else, if you have read any books on self defence. This issue is emphasized by the fact that this book is largely comprised as quotes from other books and self defence instructors. I got the impression that the author does not have any ideas of her own, she is just repeating the issues and ideas put forth by other instructors. And to make things worse, by constantly quoting to others, the text gets very repetitive. Most of the material the author quotes has been written by other no-name instructors, except for the Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. But then, by reading DeBecker's book (or just about any quality book) you'll get just about all the information you'll get from reading this book, and then some.

In addition to being repetitive and lacking any original ideas, you get some misleading or even false information from the book. For example, when discussing self defence weapons, the author writes about electric stun guns, quoting a highly exaggerated advertisement and stating as a fact that a stun gun can render your assailant unable to continue his attack for several minutes. Well, that simply is not true; not even Taser is that effective (as a police officer, I have been on receiving end of both in my training, so I speak from experience). In addition, the author does not even mention the possibility of carrying a mobile phone with you, even though she instructs that when travelling, you should always keep in touch with people you know and instruct them about your travelling plans. Had the book been written ten years earlier, this would have been understandable flaw. But since this book was published in year 2000, the possibility of carrying one of the most important self defence instruments with you should have been discussed in length.

To sum it up, it's hard to recommend this book to anyone. In addition of not giving anything new information to the reader, by relying on this book you can get some faulty advise as well.