Rating: 
Summary: A bit to much to chew... for author and reader alike
Review: This is a well written book and an impressive work. I quite like it, yet there are things that annoy me and which pulls down my overall appreciation of itBeing a sport fencer since the age of 13 myself, I share Mr Cohen's lifelong love of the sport. I have taken part in international fencing (epée though) and have met (and fenced) many of the persons mentioned in the text. My own fencing master, Bela Rerrich, is being mentioned (p. 403) as well as my ideal as a fencer and boyhood hero Hans Jacobsson. I also have a strong interest in general history as well as fencing history. Of course my background and my insight into fencing gives me another perspective than that of an ordinary reader when I review the book. My first impression is that Mr Cohen has tried to cover everything about fencing. Such an ambition of course means that the author has to handle parts of the subject where he is not an expert. It also takes its toll of the reader. Sometimes I think the text loses focus and find myself turning a few pages ahead, to see when the chapter ends and what comes next. It is as if Mr Cohen is too much in love with the subject to let go of any part of it. Even though himself a publishing director, I think he would have benefited from the eyes of a critical editor who could have cut down the total text with at least one fourth. The weakest parts are in the beginning of the book where the history of fencing is described. As example: one, in the history fencing, very important incident is the duel called the "Coup de Jarnac" in 1547, after which French kings never again granted duellists a field for fighting a duel and thus forced duelling to be an all illegal act. This also of course had implications on fencing and how it was being regarded. Rarely in history we can point at an individual event and say: - Here is a turning point, here history actually changed direction. I think Mr Cohen totally fails to recognise the importance of this incident. In his chapter "The Perfect Thrust" he reduces the "Coup de Jarnac" merely to be an example of a secret touch successfully carried out. Another turning point in the history of fencing was when French fencing masters started to teach parry-riposte in two different movements instead of one. Here I think Mr Cohen is poor both in checking his sources as well as in proof-reading. On page 72 Mr Cohen claims that the master Le Perché de Coudray in 1605 codified a new way to hold the weapon thus allowing a new way of fencing. If the text had been proof-read properly the year would have been 1635, as he correctly states on page 83. Had he checked the sources better though, he would have discovered that the 1635 work of Le Perché is a very illusive piece of paper. Egerton Castle refers to it but puts a '?' behind it in his listing of fencing books. The fencing bibliographers Vigeant (1882) and Thimm (1896) don't mention it. The Italian Gelli (1895) writes that this work can not be located and that Castle only is referring to a "traité", still Gelli thinks that Castle was too meticulous to have made a mistake but choose himself not to include it in his listings. Where and how Castle found it and got to know about it is, as far as I know, still a mystery. Instead we rely on a 1676 version of Le Perche's work. This might seem a trifle but +/-70 years of course makes a lot of difference for a reader expecting accuracy, especially since Mr Cohen jumps forward and backward in the centuries, namedropping celebrities without really telling us why. Before the eyes of the reader comes Mozart, Ignatius Loyola, Napoleon, etc all with some connection, however trivial, to swords. Moving into the 19th and 20th centuries I find Mr Cohen more on point. I can not comment on the subjects of Japanese fencing, movie fencing, sword swallowing or many of the other areas Mr Cohen moves into, but overall I think the text is much more focused and interesting from here on. I am fascinated with the accounts of nazi-fencing and the story of Helen Mayer. (A little surprised that the author found it worth to include a full chapter on her, when his main source is a biography published in 2002, apparently though he was already working on the story). In the end the author deals with issues very close in time and only of interest to the fencing establishment. For future readers these things soon will appear as out of date. This unnecessarily dates the book which, if you can let yourself be swept away by the story and the magnitude of information and disregard the errors, will be of great interest to many in- and outside of fencing for many years to come. In his final acknowledgements Mr Cohen admits there might be mistakes and shortcomings in the text but says that this, "as any past fencer will recognise is the fault of the referee". As a sabre fencer Mr Cohen might be able to make such a statement, myself an epée fencer and an international referee, would not grant me the same permission.
Rating: 
Summary: Something to keep in mind while reading -- check his facts
Review: This is a work that I find hard to categorize, but one which I enjoyed immensely. Mr. Cohen is an absolutely first rate writer and story teller and the various subjects of By the Sword can probably not be found in any other place or dozens of places. The combination of history, athletics, literature and cinema that this entails makes the book quite a page turner and one that can be read for pure pleasure. I recommend it heartily.
Rating: 
Summary: Sui Generis
Review: This is a work that I find hard to categorize, but one which I enjoyed immensely. Mr. Cohen is an absolutely first rate writer and story teller and the various subjects of By the Sword can probably not be found in any other place or dozens of places. The combination of history, athletics, literature and cinema that this entails makes the book quite a page turner and one that can be read for pure pleasure. I recommend it heartily.
Rating: 
Summary: Pen And Sword Together
Review: This is an amazingly dense, humorous, weird, horrifying, and subtle discussion of swordplay. Think of it as a stupendous compendium of dojo (salle) stories with integral links to manners, morals, politics, skullduggery, and sport. He falls down in the Japanese section (seduced by popular views of Zen) but forgiveably because he still manages to extract some quite interesting points. Wanna know where the decisive blow in the Rob Roy film duel came from? You'll find it. Wanna know who the model was for Cyrano de Bergerac? You'll find it. Wanna find out why Abe Lincoln was so formidable? You'll find it. I was surprised to see that he didn't have the famous anecdote about Bismarck: challenged to a duel; choosing sausages. But just about everything else is there. This book is splendid fun.
Rating:
Summary: richard cohen replies
Review: This is in response to two recent (summer 2003) reviews, one from an anonymous reader in New York, the other from Mr Henning Osterberg from Stockholm.
The anonymous reviewer is right to question my titling of Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai trilogy. I took the details from David Shipman's authoritiative history, THE STORY OF CINEMA. His date - 1964 - may be the release date for the trilogy in the U.S. As for Yukio Mishima being called a Nobel laureate, I am again at fault, although the Internet biography of the author calls him 'the first Japanese novelist to win a Nobel Prize'. He didn't; but whether this is properly a 'major blunder' on my part is a matter of opinion: Mishima was nominated for the Nobel on three separate occasions. On a subject that ranges over 3000 years and covers virtually the whole world I knew that I would make errors. Many of these have been corrected in the paperback edition of the book, published last week by Modern Library. As it was, I had at least two experts in the subject concerned - sometimes more - read each chapter, as well as the checking done by Rndom House edeitors and proofreaders. Even so, Mr Osterverg is right about the literal on p. 72: the date should indeed be 1635. I would disagree with him about the importance I give to the Coup de Jarnac. I say that the French king never authorized another trial by battle; but as for the next three hundred years and more dueling weas a favourite French activity I do not see Jarnac as a pivotal figure in the history of swordplay. On the other hand, I do descibe in detail why such figures as Napoleon and Ignatius Loyola deserve mention, and I believe that Helen Mayer, as most probably the best woman fencer ever and arguably someone who could have altered the course of world history in 1935, is well worth a chapter to herself.
Mr Osterberg, himself a fine epee referee, ends his review by questioning my saying that any faults in my book are due to 'the referee'. This was meant humorously (sabreurs regularly blame referees for everything). Of course any errors in the book are my responsibility. But then foilists and sabreurs have long harbored doubts about the sense of humor of epeeists. Are we wrong?
Rating:
Summary: Second Thoughts
Review: When I wrote my first review of this book I had just read the first two chapters and I was incensed at the number of mistakes they contained. I've now read the rest of the book and have received correspondence from the author. My view of the book is now a little different. Don't get me wrong, the chapters on the early history of fencing are still replete with errors. To answer some points made by other reviewers, horse armour WAS in the vicinity of 60lbs, not 450, for example, the 15th century Gothic horse armour that forms the centrepiece of the Wallace Collection weighs 66lb, 5 1/2 oz. Medieval fencing systems did rely heavily on parries with the sword. For example, Manuscript I.33, a sword and buckler (small shield) manual and the oldest extant fencing text displays parries with the blade on about 35 of its 64 plates. These far outnumber the parries made with the buckler. The reviewer who claimed that the blade was not used for parries might care to explain this manuscript and indeed all the other medieval manuscripts, because every one teaches parries with the blade, from I.33's overbinds and underbinds to Fiore Dei Liberi's incrosada's, Ringeck's absetzen etc. etc. La Destreza, the system of Spanish rapier fencing created by Don Hieronymo Carranza may not be comprehensible to Mr Cohen, but it is comprehensible to me. It is more than comprehensible to Maestro Ramon Martinez, the world's foremost expert on the system, who as Tony Wolf stated, lives in the same city as Mr Cohen. I have fenced Spanish rapier and consider it to be a suberb and most logical system. In fact Maestro Martinez and I have written a paper on the system. Too many hatchet jobs have been done on La Destreza. Carranza's contemporaries (such as George Silver) wrote in praise of his system. Credit them with some discernment. Finally and most importantly, medieval fencing systems were every bit as sophisticated as any fencing system from any period of history. The oldest fencing treatise in existence is the aforementioned MSS. I.33, referenced in "By the Sword". I don't believe that anyone can read this treatise and claim a lack of sophistication in medieval fencing. All the core principles behind modern fencing, timing, distance, line, blade sensitivity, parries, beats, binds etc. are present in this, the very oldest work there is. As an Italian fencing master I know said when he saw it, "It is being so good that I think it to be a false". He was astounded to see so much sophistication at our earliest substantive point in the fencing record. But, why should he have been astounded? Men have been fighting with swords for thousands of years. Their lives depend on them doing it well. Of course they developed good combat systems. In case Mr Cohen doesn't read medieval Latin (the language of I.33) he should have taken a look at Christian Tobler's "Secrets of German Medieval Swordsmanship". This is a translation and analysis of Sigmund Ringeck's treatise of c. 1440. I don't believe that any impartial observer could read this book and deny the subtlety and sophistication of medieval swordsmanship. In my first review my signature contained my title as editor of Spada, the world's only peer reviewed journal devoted to the history of fencing. I did this in the hope that people would read this title and recognise that here was someone who didn't make statements on this subject without being 100% sure of his facts. I'm sorry to have to embarass those people who didn't appreciate this point. So, why does this matter? Am I just being a pedant? Well, no, because Mr Cohen has essentially denied the existence of the arts that I study, both academically and physically. So I feel that my criticisms are justified. Saying, "hang on, the subject that I've devoted my life to studying does exist" is hardly pedantry. The level of scholarship in the first two chapters of "By the Sword" is simply not acceptable given current knowledge on the subject. However... That's the first two chapters and there are a lot more than two chapters. As is my wont, I stuck with the book and found that it improved dramatically. Once the author is on topics about which he is more familiar (basically once fencing becomes recognisably modern)the book improves dramatically. I enjoyed it and I learned a lot about a sport I've been involved with for decades. I hope that people read the book and become enthusiastic about fencing. I also hope they read this review and look more deeply into the rich history of fencing. I hope publishers realise the deep interest the public has in swordsmanship and I also hope that future authors make use of the easily available material on historical fencing. There is a lot more to "By the Sword" than the early history of the art, but that's what I'm primarily interested in, hence the fact that it still only gets two stars. However, it deserves praise for what it does well, praise that it didn't get in my first review. At the time I wrote that I had yet to read a part of the book that deserved any praise. Hence this second review. I still have mixed feelings about "By the Sword". Like the little girl in the rhyme, when it's good it's very, very good and when it's bad, it's horrid. Sincerely
Stephen Hand
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