Customer Reviews

Knives: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Knives for Fighting, Hunting, and Survival

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Being one of the man's oldest tools, the knife has a lot of material to work with, trying to sum it up in a single volume of only 144 pages it's really an enormous challenge that the author tries to tame with some success, but to call the book an encyclopedia is misleading, it can be called a good reference, but since it contains too many personal opinions and absolute truths, that can't be upholded even now, that the scientific sense that the word encyclopedia infers is lost; the substantial references to commercial knives and products available only in some places and in a given time (even tough no longer available at the date of the publishing) makes this a short lived and forgettable book.

Pat Farey's "Knives" is more of an introduction to knives, than a detailed encyclopedia covering specific knives or specific knife types. While a decent introduction, the book does not go into depth and is greatly biased towards knives in current production. It does however cover the essentials, and the pictures are clear and instructive.