Ellis Amdur
20th July 2009, 21:16
Announcing Prepublication Sales of Ellis Amdur's New Book, Hidden in Plain Sight: Tracing the Roots of Ueshiba Morihei's Power.
I am offering pre-release sales of 500 signed and numbered volumes of my latest book on martial arts. Please go to http://www.edgework.info/buy.html. You can purchase copies of the book in advance, and they will be sent to you upon the completion of printing - which is currently expected to be August 20th.
Although my other work is sold elsewhere, [I]Hidden in Plain Sight will only be sold on my website for the near future. The only means of purchase are Paypal, using a credit card that is processed through Paypal (you don't have to sign up), or check/money order. Those who either find difficulty with the rather labyrinthine process, or otherwise prefer not to use a card, can mail the latter directly to me with a clearly written address.
The blurb on the back of the book is as follows:
Ellis Amdur's writing on martial arts has been groundbreaking. In his first book, Dueling with Osensei, Amdur threw down a gauntlet to practitioners, that the moral dimension of martial arts is in expressed in acts of integrity, not spiritual platitudes and deification of fantasized warrior-sages. In his second book, Old School, he applied both academic rigor and keen observation to offer the reader as close a look as words can provide to the some of the classical martial arts of Japan. leavening his writing with vivid descriptions of some of the actual practitioners of these wonderful traditions.
In this volume, Amdur has radically reworked his iconoclastic essays first published on the website of Aikido Journal. Here, he attempts to establish the existence of something all but lost in Japanese martial arts, a sophisticated type of training, encompassing mental imagery, breath-work, and a variety of physical techniques that offered the practitioner the potential to develop skills sometimes viewed as nearly superhuman. Commonly referred to as "internal training," and usually believed to be the provenance of Chinese martial arts, Amdur asserts that not only was it once common among many Japanese martial traditions, but elements of such training still remain, passed down in a few martial arts, literally "hidden in plain sight." As always, Amdur reminds us that this is a human endeavor and he provides vivid, even heartbreaking portrayals of some of the great practitioners of these skills, men who devoted their lives to an obsessive pursuit of power.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Contents
* Chapter 1 - The Chinese Connection
* Chapter 2 - The Birth of Daito-ryu
* Chapter 3 * A Unified Field Theory: Aiki and Weapons
* Chapter 4 - Aikido is Three Peaches
* Chapter 5 - Hidden in Plain Sight
* Chapter 6 - Circle, Square, Triangle: How to Be O-Sensei in Sixteen Easy Steps
* Epilogue
I am offering pre-release sales of 500 signed and numbered volumes of my latest book on martial arts. Please go to http://www.edgework.info/buy.html. You can purchase copies of the book in advance, and they will be sent to you upon the completion of printing - which is currently expected to be August 20th.
Although my other work is sold elsewhere, [I]Hidden in Plain Sight will only be sold on my website for the near future. The only means of purchase are Paypal, using a credit card that is processed through Paypal (you don't have to sign up), or check/money order. Those who either find difficulty with the rather labyrinthine process, or otherwise prefer not to use a card, can mail the latter directly to me with a clearly written address.
The blurb on the back of the book is as follows:
Ellis Amdur's writing on martial arts has been groundbreaking. In his first book, Dueling with Osensei, Amdur threw down a gauntlet to practitioners, that the moral dimension of martial arts is in expressed in acts of integrity, not spiritual platitudes and deification of fantasized warrior-sages. In his second book, Old School, he applied both academic rigor and keen observation to offer the reader as close a look as words can provide to the some of the classical martial arts of Japan. leavening his writing with vivid descriptions of some of the actual practitioners of these wonderful traditions.
In this volume, Amdur has radically reworked his iconoclastic essays first published on the website of Aikido Journal. Here, he attempts to establish the existence of something all but lost in Japanese martial arts, a sophisticated type of training, encompassing mental imagery, breath-work, and a variety of physical techniques that offered the practitioner the potential to develop skills sometimes viewed as nearly superhuman. Commonly referred to as "internal training," and usually believed to be the provenance of Chinese martial arts, Amdur asserts that not only was it once common among many Japanese martial traditions, but elements of such training still remain, passed down in a few martial arts, literally "hidden in plain sight." As always, Amdur reminds us that this is a human endeavor and he provides vivid, even heartbreaking portrayals of some of the great practitioners of these skills, men who devoted their lives to an obsessive pursuit of power.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Contents
* Chapter 1 - The Chinese Connection
* Chapter 2 - The Birth of Daito-ryu
* Chapter 3 * A Unified Field Theory: Aiki and Weapons
* Chapter 4 - Aikido is Three Peaches
* Chapter 5 - Hidden in Plain Sight
* Chapter 6 - Circle, Square, Triangle: How to Be O-Sensei in Sixteen Easy Steps
* Epilogue