Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fun to read, a little shallow in "technical" details, 24 May 2004
The book is an impressively researched history of fencing.
As such, the main goal is the concept of one-on-one combat, first as duels, then, progressively, as a sport.
While the book devotes some pages to swords in general, their military use, and their role in other cultures (like Japan) the majority of the text is devoted to the west and to non-military uses of the sword (including staged fights for movies and theatrical plays).What the book excels at is a vivid portrait of fencing, with hundreds of historical figures, episodes and little-known facts. As such it is pretty entertaining even for people (like me) who know little or nothing about fencing. On the other hand, I feel that after having read it I have absorbed a lot of trivia on the subject, but I still feel pretty ignorant about fencing. The author often uses technical terms (tierce, fleche...) which I am unable to visualize in my mind, and this somehow diminishes the experience: lots of the fights described in the text would probably be more striking if I were able to understand what happened. In a sense, is like reading an history of chess, including the various quirks of famous historical masters, without actually know anything about the game itself. Perhaps what I wanted is too difficult to express on paper, or would have required too much dry pages with drawings and pictures. The book is still pretty accessible to the layman, and is fun to read, anyway, and I understand why the author prefers to go for the historical episodes and short portraits of famous fencers instead of drab technical pictures.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fencing - the new rock and roll?, 7 Dec 2002
Of all the weapons of war and combat, the sword has fascinated more and for longer than any other. 'By the Sword' is an entertaining, informative and eminently readable journey through the history of swordsmanship from gladiators to Olympic athletes, taking in the antics of famous swordsmen and swashbuckling filmstars, and including an interesting (but hopefully not too helpful) section on how to cheat. Somebody wrote recently in the Times that fencing is the new rock and roll. Its comeback in the film business, and particularly the work of Bob Anderson on -- among others -- the Lord of the Rings and others gets due treatment in this book. Whether you are a fencer, or a former fencer, or a lover of interesting stories and interesting characters, this is a book to linger over long winters evenings or bright spring mornings.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Try Parrying That, Rousseau!, 26 Feb 2003
This is a very enjoyable book on "swordsmanship" through the ages, with fascinating historical tidbits on the equipment and accoutrements, and many exciting, funny (and horrific) anecdotes concerning fencers and duellists. The book has many interesting footnotes, which alone almost justify the purchase price. Here, for example, is one on armor: "It was never called a 'suit of armor,' a phrase that arose only about 1600, but always 'harness.' The expression 'he died in harness' does not mean that a man was, at death, doing his job like a horse, but that he was wearing full armor. 'Armed' originally meant wearing armor- not carrying a weapon." In another footnote in the section on dueling, Mr. Cohen comments favorably on the Greenland Inuits manner of dueling: When a Greenlander considers himself to have been insulted, he challenges the offending party to a "duel of wits." Each man, supported by seconds, composes a satirical song. The songs are sung in front of an audience, which acts as a jury and votes for a winner. After that, the matter is considered to be settled and the men must be friendly towards one another. (This is certainly a lot more civilized and a lot less deadly than the traditional duel!) The book covers every area you could possibly want to know about- there are sections on knights, duellists, samurai, musketeers, swordplay in the movies, Olympic competitors, sword manufacture, injuries, etc. In the section on samurai Mr. Cohen mentions that it was common practice for the warriors to test the sharpness of their new blades by hacking up the corpses of criminals who had been executed! The more corpses you could chop up before having to stop to sharpen the blade, the better the weapon. In the section on the various types of blades, the author explains that the curved weapon known as the scimitar was invented by the horsemen of the Near East. While fighting from horseback it was much easier to swing your arm in an arc and slash away than it was to try to jab someone with a straight blade- hence, the advantages of a long, curved blade. In the section on the movies, Mr. Cohen talks about the sequence in "The Empire Strikes Back" where Darth Vader fought Luke Skywalker. Real swords were used, made with carbon-fiber blades, painted with reflective paint to simulate laser light. The Darth Vader costume was so bulky and restrictive, with poor visibility due to the helmet, that the filmmakers were concerned that Mark Hamill (who was wearing no protective clothing) could be injured if the sword sequences were done with a regular stuntman. So, they brought in an expert swordmaster- Bob Anderson, who had been a British professional champion and British national coach. The section on fencing injuries is not for the squeamish, as Mr. Cohen writes about the dangers of broken blades and the rather unpleasant experience of having a sword lodged in your throat or thrust through your eye. The reason I gave the book 4 stars rather than 5 was that I felt the book could have been a bit shorter- some of the sections ran on a bit longer than necessary and could have been "tightened up" with better editing. Also, the last 200 pages or so, which is about 40% of the book, dealt with Olympic fencing, modern competition and coaches, etc. It may be a sign of my preference for the earlier historical material, but since the book is supposed to be a history of all aspects of swordsmanship I thought this was too much space to devote to just one area of the subject. Still, as you can tell from what I've mentioned above, this book covers a lot of ground and is an interesting (as well as just a plain fun-to-read) book. I probably should end by mentioning the title of my review. It is an exact quote of what the revolutionary judge said to Augustin Rousseau, fencing master to the royal family, when he sentenced poor Mr. Rousseau to the guillotine in 1793!
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