By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers,

Richard Cohen's By The Sword is a history of swordplay from its orgins to the present. He talks about swordplay in all its many forms and looks at many different aspects of it, from Mensur (German dueling) to modern fencing.



This book is a great read for anyone interested in swordplay and gives great insight into the history of our sport. The stories are all captivating and well written. There are also pictures with captions that are all very interesting and relevant. My only gripe is that for some it may be a long and tedious read as it has small font and 480 pages. Personally this was not a problem as I took my time and enjoyed it and would certainly welcome more. I highly reccomend this to any fencer or history buff.

I have found this book delightful for beginning reading on fencing history.



However, there are (as has been previously noted) numerous errors, and at best this work paraphrases and thematically organizes the primary sources, + a little commmentary and personal opinion/commentary.



So don't stop with this book. Refer to the sources cited in this book, and whichever others you can find!

this book was pretty good. But for the person looking for an instructional guide to fencing this is not it. The book contain cool facts and instances in the history of fencing to the present day.

This is a really fun book giving a quick and largely good history of the sword and fencing. The fact that it is such an entertaining read outweighs any factual errors that may have been made.

The insights into fencers and fencing in the late 20th century is also very good.

This chatty, comprehensive history of dueling and fencing is written by someone who has been immersed in the sport. Though a thick book, it is well written, and has interesting sidelights on the sport. According to those in a position to know, he repeats a number of truisms about the early history of the sport which have been discredited. However, he gets the modern history dead-on, and his accounts of his own experiences add a good deal to the mix. It's a popular history book, not a piece of academic scholarship, and I wouldn't use it as a definitive source, but I recommend it wholeheartedly as a pleasure read.