MJR

Although Mr.Tedeschi did a fair job at covering the art's background and has filled the book with excellent quality photographs it seems clear that in attempting not to represent any particular school's approach to hapkido he has created something that really represents an approach that none of the major schools teach from. By trying to please all he has in the end represented none. ( Which one may say, quite fairly, may have been his aim but for me it removes much of the organizational intelligence that various hapkido groups have sought put into things such as a meaningful order for introducing techniques. )

While reading this book I often questioned whether he was not a practitioner more influenced by arts other than hapkido.His manner of performing many techniques is sometimes not consistant with that of the many senior teachers I've been exposed to in nearly 2 decades of study both in North America and Korea and without a doubt he includes technique from outside the art.

I'm being overly hard on the book I suppose only because many people in their excitement over the Tedeschi book's size and breadth rate it as the DIFINITIVE hapkido book while I feel other books do the job better in many respects. ( And many others probably feel differently. ) It is a good book. It just isn't the book.

Books by Hee-Young Kimm ("Hapkido") and Kwang-Sik Myung ("Korean Hapkido"), practitioners with whom I am not connected, still remain the best on the subject in my opinion. Although they have become increasing difficult to find they are still available. Pick up a Taekwondo Times and you'll find distributors for them I'm sure.

__________________
Matthew Rogers
Director of the Scarborough
Martial Arts Training Group
www.spiritforging.com