Customer Reviews

Myths and Legends of the Martial Arts

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Myths and Legends of the Martial Arts, by Peter Lewis, is a great intro to the stories that evolved around and about the martial arts. They provide entertainment that one can also learn philosophies, ideals, and insight on various aspects of the martial arts from. The stories themselves are short and this makes it very convenient for those who don't have much leisure time. This is a great book and very interesting to read.

Myths and Legends of the Martial Arts is a book filled with short stories. Each story offers enlightenment and entertainment value, which keeps the pace of the book flowing. The fast pace book, takes a journey from the times of samurai to the times of Bruce Lee. The author manages to keep the stories short but still interesting. I really enjoyed the fast pace of the book. Since the book was made up with short stories, I did not have time to become bored with book. This is very important because I usually get sick of a book before I have time to finish it. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the Martial Arts and wants to be able to finsih a book completely.

I found this book to be really easy to read. Author is not getting into too much detail, he is telling stories, not a thriller. You don't have to have any martial arts background to understand these stories, they are like fairy tales, but more realistic.In my opinion this book is well written and put together, a very nice collection of stories. A few pictures would not spoil this book.

An ideal introduction into the history of martial arts. I found it to be an excellent guide to choosing the martial arts that I wish to study. The book gives a history were other books give lots of pictures no history and names such as karate kung fu and judo.

As the title suggest this book contains a selection of myths and legends from martial arts. They are not exclusively Japanese (although Japan does feature heavily) and covers Malaysian, Thai and Brazilian arts to name but a few. Some of these stories are well known Japanese stories and make for delightful repeated reading and others were new to me and have quickly become firm favourites. Each story is fairly short, usually 2-3 pages, and this makes for a fast read, as once you start you can't help but keep reading on and on. This isn't an in-depth analysis of martial stories, nor does it intend to be, but it is a wonderful selection that can't help but inspire you in your training and is great to dip into at odd moments here and there. Recommended if you're into martial arts or Japanese culture in general.