For many years, Chinese martial arts suffered from a lack of solid and reutable reading material. Very little primary source material was available in English, and the vast majority of books around in the 70s, 80s and 90s were generally all circulating and repeating the same old rubbish and myths.
Japanese martial arts were the same. After Donn Draeger's pioneering work, there really wasn't much reliable stuff out there on the classical martial arts of Japan. That's changed in the last 5-10 years though, with such excellent and knowledgable writers like Ellis Amdur, Meik and Dianne Skoss, Dave Lowry and Karl Friday. After a long, long gap, they are continuing the legacy of Draeger.
I'm noticing a similar trend now in the CMA world. I have been very impressed with the work of the likes of Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo, Meir Shahar and Jarek Szymanski. We need more like them to start correcting all the crap that's built up about CMA over the past 40 years or so.
Can anyone recommend any other authors like that?
Japanese martial arts were the same. After Donn Draeger's pioneering work, there really wasn't much reliable stuff out there on the classical martial arts of Japan. That's changed in the last 5-10 years though, with such excellent and knowledgable writers like Ellis Amdur, Meik and Dianne Skoss, Dave Lowry and Karl Friday. After a long, long gap, they are continuing the legacy of Draeger.
I'm noticing a similar trend now in the CMA world. I have been very impressed with the work of the likes of Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo, Meir Shahar and Jarek Szymanski. We need more like them to start correcting all the crap that's built up about CMA over the past 40 years or so.
Can anyone recommend any other authors like that?