By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions; 10th anniversary edition (Modern Library Paperbacks)
by Richard Cohen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard CohenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-08-05
ISBN: 0812969669
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Modern Library
Book Reviews of By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions; 10th anniversary edition (Modern Library Paperbacks)
Book Review: Beware the pedants - they are often wrong
Summary: 5 Stars
I am the author's wife and I'm posting his review below...
Beware the pedants - they are often wrong
It is some time since I looked at the reviews of my book, and I am very grateful for the appreciative ones. However, there seems to be a feeling that the book is littered with errors. Not so. In so long a text,over 500 pages, a few were bound to creep in, but so far I have had to correct less than a dozen, all of them minor - and that includes errors pointed out to me in letters I have received from medieval historians and other specialists.A revised edition in the summer of 2008 will bring the whole story of fencing up to date, and have every error I have been informed about corrected.
One continuing charge is that I overrate Errol Flynn as a fencer and underrate Tyrone Power. Well, here I stick to my guns (or foils). My own coach, the supreme Hollywood swordmaster Bob Anderson (as detailed in the book), trained Flynn, and though Flynn was no great technician he was such a gifted sportsman (tennis champion, Olympic boxing try-out, you name it) that his fencing was remarkably convincing. Power, on the other hand, was overweight when making his so-called great Zorro film; in the key scene, he is often unbalanced, ill-coordinated and flat-footed. I say this not as someone out to 'get' Power, but simply as an international fencer of many years who knows sloppy fencing when he sees it. As for Basil Rathbone, he was much better, but still no more than an adequate club fencer - as many contemporaries attest. If someone tells you differently just don't believe them.
- Richard Cohen
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Summary of By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions; 10th anniversary edition (Modern Library Paperbacks)
Napoleon fenced. So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who would cross swords with his daughter, Margaret, when she came home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Igantius Loyala challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ?s divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was ?off to get spaghetti,? their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting?a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.With a new Foreword by the author
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