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Rating: 
Summary: An excellent introduction and resource
Review: Authoritatively written by Darrell Max Craig (a Japanese sword and ritual expert with black belts in ten martial arts, and who has earned the title of Shihan or "master teacher" in Japan), The Heart Of Kendo: A Comprehensive Introduction To The Philosophy And Practice Of The Art Of The Sword is an informed and informative guide to the Japanese discipline of the sword, starting with the basics of the equipment and its care and then moving on to the spiritual virtues of respect and restraint; exercises, grips, stances, strikes, positioning; seven long-sword forms (kata) that form the foundation of kendo practice; and more. An excellent introduction and resource to the physical and spiritual depth of this challenging martial art, The Heart Of Kendo is a welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition to personal, professional, and academic Martial Arts reference collections.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent introduction and resource
Review: Authoritatively written by Darrell Max Craig (a Japanese sword and ritual expert with black belts in ten martial arts, and who has earned the title of Shihan or "master teacher" in Japan), The Heart Of Kendo: A Comprehensive Introduction To The Philosophy And Practice Of The Art Of The Sword is an informed and informative guide to the Japanese discipline of the sword, starting with the basics of the equipment and its care and then moving on to the spiritual virtues of respect and restraint; exercises, grips, stances, strikes, positioning; seven long-sword forms (kata) that form the foundation of kendo practice; and more. An excellent introduction and resource to the physical and spiritual depth of this challenging martial art, The Heart Of Kendo is a welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition to personal, professional, and academic Martial Arts reference collections.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding introductory book
Review: Outstanding introduction to kendo, covering the history, equipment, katas or forms, competition and rules, and many other areas of knowledge from an American who trained for years in Japan and also has more black belts in other arts than you can shake a stick (or a bo or a bokken) at. If you liked this book, I would also recommend Karl Friday's Legacies of the Sword for a more scholarly look at the history and culture of iaido and kendo from a professor of Japanese history at the University of Georgia, much of it impressively researched and written from original language sources. It's mostly focused on the famous Kashima Shinryu style, but much of it is relevant to the other styles as well, and dozens of masters in the history of the sword arts get discussed and their styles as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Good on the philosophical parts.
Review: The thing to remember is that even though an author may be described as an expert with a kzillion honors, it does not necessarily mean they are any good at teaching (or writing). It's the same as having brilliant professors in college who can't teach. These are smart people but since they are already highly fluent in the material, they forget how to present the information to complete novices. This book is a perfect example of this. The philosophical introductions and the interviews are excellent and worth reading. But the organization of materials could have been better.
For example, the bogu (armor) is introduced before any of the basics like etiquette or basic foot work are explained. Most beginners will not see a bogu for 8 months. What a typical beginner needs is buried late in the book in the section on technical kata. Drawings are ok but lack detail. In some cases a photo would have been more useful. Eg a photo of the shinai parts would have been better than the line drawings which don't communicate anything useful. The diagrams are labeled with numbers rather than names so you have to hunt thru the text to find their names. Why not just put the labels next to the arrows? This isn't a model kit! Whoever did the design of the visuals does not know anything about visual communication. Worst of all some of the diagrams are simply wrong! This book is ok to fill in a few missing parts in ones Kendo instruction, but be careful of errors. The descriptions of the kata are in the form of sentences so you have to read several paragraphs over and over again to clarify what is in the diagram. It would have been more effective to have each step enumerated in a list and then correspond the enumerations with the pictures. Also there is no index in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Book
Review: This interesting text about kendo is also available in hardback (or at least was, at one time). So be sure to read the reviews of the same material under the separate hardback listing.
The stories are inspiring, the text helpful. This is the most beautiful book I've ever seen devoted to a martial art.
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