The Overlook Martial Arts Handbook, by David Mitchell

avid Mitchell is an Englishman and a well known karate- and budo exponent and teacher. He is also the author to several books, amongst them: "The Official Self Defence Handbook".

"The Overlook Martial Arts Handbook" presents some of the more famous arts from Japan, China, Korea, Thailand and Okinawa. In other words it is not a complete overview on the Oriental martial arts (if such a thing is possible to make at all).

The main arts being presented are kung fu from Kina, weapon arts from Japan and Okinawa, aikido, shorinji kempo and ju jitsu from Japan, karate from Okinawa and Japan, Korean arter like hapkido and taekwondo, muay thai from Thailand as well as some newer arts such as kick-boxing.

Just as in his selfdefence handbook, Mitchell uses great drawings to show various techniques throughout this book. In the part about ju jitsu there are som drawings that are typical British ju jitsu from Richard M. Morris. There are some drawings of a young lady that is very much alike our "old" friend Debbie (the leading female student of soke Morris). She was a tough charachter, and she used to scare the living daylight out of many a guy back in those days at Jan-Erik Karlsson's dojo in Lund, Sweden. "Many moons ago, my son" :-)

To my knowledge all the information here is correct, and there's also a lot of information about each art being presented. It seems that Mitchell has chosen to consentrate on fewer arts, writing more about them in return. Not a bad strategy if you ask me. This book can be recommended to anyone being interested in these arts.

Abebooks is always the place to start your search for this book here or other used or out-of-print items.

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