One of the things I've noted before is that its really hard to find good books on the martial arts. It's doubly hard to find critical texts given that the martial arts as a whole doesn't have a strong history of self-criticism. Even the non-woo-ish books tend to present their material without feeling the need to question or defend the presentation.
So I was quite pleased to find Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo one day while browsing the MA section of my local bookstore. It is exactly what it claims to be, a historical survey of Chinese MA training manuals spanning a period from the late 16th century to the mid 20th century. More importantly Kennedy and Guo aren't rooting for a particular school or style. Rather, the seem genuinely interested providing solid information regarding the evolution of the martial arts in China.
The book is divided into two sections. The first part, which I found most interesting, is a general history of Chinese MA and training methods. It has all sorts of good stuff including a commentary on the academic study of the martial arts, a investigation of the historical evolution/understanding of 'qi', and a discussion of the amount of pure BS that is to be found in historic manuals. They also introduce a interesting character, Tang Hao, an early historian of the martial arts who did quite a bit of primary research in the field.
The second section is a review of various exemplar manuals. Its interesting to see how manuals have evolved over the year and how they compare to modern publications, but I found this section to be less useful overall than the first.
As I said above, I think this book makes a good addition to a MA library because of its critical nature. One of the recurrent concerns of MA practitioners (in the US at least) is that we've inadvertently ruined a noble discipline due to the commercial nature of most of our studios. In reading this book you quickly realize that Chinese martial arts was as a whole never some pure, spritual practice unsullied by commercialism or pragmatic concerns. The way we "do" the martial arts in the US is certainly no worse than historic practice and may indeed be (a slight bit) better because we're more open to empirical/historical inquiry than past practitioners have been.
One improvement that I might suggest to Kennedy and Guo for a future revision would be the inclusion of a "Further Reading" list of some kind that's accessible to English speakers. Some of the sources cited in the text are available in reprinted form from Lion Books, but being reprints rather than translations they're all in the original Chinese. I, for one, would love to read Tang Hao's works, but I've had no luck finding English translations.
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