Martial History Team

  Where can one find reputable Bruce Lee quotes?  Introduction  It's common to find quotes by Bruce Lee throughout social media. A fair number of these quotes are just plain fakes. There's so many false "quotes" on the Internet that I (Richard) occasionally research them for a dedicated affiliated blog called Sourcing Bruce Lee .  If there are so many fakes around, how does one find reputable Bruce Lee quotes? This post will introduce several sets of resources, starting with Tuttle's Bruce Lee Library. These books, especially those in the Library, are the sources social media users will find as the most accurate and fruitful repositories of Bruce Lee material. The Bruce Lee Library: "Tier Zero" Sources Tier Zero Sources: The Bruce Lee Library, volumes 1-8 The Bruce Lee Library is a series of 8 books originally produced by Tuttle Publishing  between 1997 and 2000. They are mainly written by John Little. His LinkedIn page states that he was the literary e...

How do I (Richard) plan to spend my reading time for the rest of 2020 and the first half of 2021? Overview  My personal martial arts library consists of several collections: print books, digital books, digital papers and articles, and digital media (instructionals, videos, and the like). One of my goals for Martial History Team is to review this material and produce recommended reading (or watching) lists, at least for the topics for which I have coverage and which personally interest me. In doing so I hope to encourage others, whether part of MHT or not, to do the same, thereby making it easier for martial arts researchers and enthusiasts to recognize quality sources and avoid less reliable material. Thus far I have been reading in an ad-hoc manner, depending on whatever interests I might have at the moment. This weekend I decided to formalize my reading plan such that I could cover certain materials and topics within a defined period of time. Focus Areas My current focus is on pr...

Inventing the Way of the Samurai, Dr Oleg Benesch, 2014, book cover Introduction Martial History Team’s mission is to promote martial arts history based on sound evidence and sourced research. This post will explain how the project evaluates books that will eventually be added to “recommended reading” lists. It will also describe criteria that are useful for anyone trying to weigh whether a book is a reliable historical reference. 1. Citation Inclusion Inventing the Way of the Samurai, pages 1-2 The number one criteria for books that will make the MHT lists is extensive use of citations. The author makes a claim, and then supports it with a citation. For example, on the very first page of Dr. Oleg Benesch’s 2014 book Inventing the Way of the Samurai , he has already made three citations, shown at the end of the three highlighted sentences in the image above. Books without citations could be opinions, or they could be well-informed. The problem for the reader is determ...

Plate LIII, British Manly Exercises by Donald Walker, 1835, wrestling chapter Today I found a great resource for researching martial arts treatises. It's called the  Schola Artis Gladii et Armorum Treatise database  and it's hosted by a martial arts school in Hungary. They offer over 3,000 entries contributed by users, many of which have working links to source material.  One of the best aspects of the site is the ability to select search parameters. For example, when I searched for English, grappling and wrestling, groundfighting, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling in armour, the search yielded 79 hits. It's important to verify the search results. For example, the results of my query yielded the following first result: Title: Cottonian MS Titus A. XXV Alternative title: The strokes if ij hand swerde Year: around 1457 Language: English Secondary language: Latin Located in: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München <-- Click the name for more information. ...

For several years I've been tracking items in my library using private Amazon wish lists. This worked well enough because I could create a different list for each topic, and Amazon had just about every book I wanted to document. If Amazon lacked the book, I could add an entry as an "idea." It was clunky, but decent. Recently I decided I needed a better solution. I wanted a way to tag books, such that a single title on judo history could be tagged with grappling, judo , and history , while a different title on judo techniques could be tagged with grappling , judo , techniques . I wanted a solution that had an iOS app and a Web interface. It needed to let me add custom content, and export lists is CSV of similar format. If it interfaced with a public database of books, so much the better. I was willing to pay for all of this, but if there was a free version with a book limit (say, 1000 books), then that was a bonus. Before mentioning the solution I found, I want to expl...

Over the last few months I've been acquiring a variety of sources on various aspects of the martial arts. My initial focus was on jujutsu and its derivatives, primary judo, and especially newaza (grappling on the mat). More recently I've expanded my interests to grappling as found in the historical European martial arts (HEMA) communities. This post will outline a few of the places I've been acquiring sources. Digital documents . Many of the sources which interest me are a century or more old. The early 20th century is one of my research areas, as this is when judo expanded to the Western world. Many books from this period are available online, usually as a PDF scanned from a physical book. The copyright has expired on these old books, so they are sometimes available for download. Reprints, sold online or in stores . A certain number of older books have been reprinted, and can be purchased at low cost. The quality of these reproductions varies from scans of the original...