Product Description

Napoleon fenced. So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who would cross swords with his daughter, Margaret, when she came home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Igantius Loyala challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ’s divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was “off to get spaghetti,” their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting—a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.
 
With a new Foreword by the author

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311978 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-05
• Released on: 2003-08-05
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.03" h x 1.20" w x 5.04" l, .92 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Cohen's enthusiastic history of the sword and of swordplay captures the adventure, romance, danger and intrigue that the weapon has represented throughout world history. The narrative contains superheroes, villains, underdogs, spies, alchemists, movie stars and champions. Rather than use a purely chronological structure, Cohen (who has written for the New Yorker) takes apart many of the influences that fencing has had on society and vice versa. Barely a subject escapes his eyes: metallurgy and the quest for a sword that would hold its edge and remain strong; the damage swords can do to a body (including purposeful gashes across the cheek); judicial duels (it was believed that God would intervene on behalf of the innocent party, who would win regardless of fencing ability); the history of the Musketeers; swashbuckling movies; modern sport fencing (which countries and even families reign supreme and why), Fascists (Mussolini and many higher-ups in Hitler's regime fenced), cheating and the Olympics. Staying away from an impersonal history, the author extends his own involvement with the sport he was on the British Olympic team four times (1972, 1976, 1980 and 1984) by visiting as many of his subjects as he can, from the historically superior sword-making city of Toledo to Gretel Bergmann, a figure in a Nazi fencing scandal. There are copious playful asides as footnotes filling the reader in on wonderful facts and anecdotes. For those with even a casual interest in fencing, Cohen's work will be a delightful read; he brings the daunting breadth of the history of the sword within easy reach of the curious.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The culture of the sword has given us everything from words like prizefight and freelance to such customs as shaking hands, the military salute, or men buttoning their coats on the right. Cohen's exuberant history of swordplay begins with an account of his own 1972 "duel" in London, then leaps into the story of civilization as measured through the evolving technology and customs around broadswords, armor, lances, foils, sabers, rapiers, and epees. Readers wanting only to escape into chivalric tales from Musketeer days will not be disappointed; however, the polished writing and masterly use of centuries of anecdote should lure them through equally vivid sections on Roman gladiators, medieval knights, Japanese Samurai, and the swashbuckling crazes in Italy, Spain, France, England, and Hollywood. (According to Cohen, a British publisher and Olympic fencer, actors Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jr. were exceptional fencers, while Tyrone Power might not have opened a pi$ata without a sword double.) Cohen perhaps didn't need to explore the sword proficiencies of American presidents, but this is a small matter in a work so rich in social history: Cohen investigates the sword duels of Ben Johnson and Voltaire and the real source of Cardinal Richelieu's hatred of sword dueling. A fascinating story told with literary verve and the pride of a longtime practitioner; highly recommended.
Nathan Ward, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The author, a four-time Olympic fencer (and former publishing director for an eminent British house), packs this history of sword fighting with so much detail that even the most drastically uninformed reader will come away with a deep appreciation for the sport that started as a way of life. Cohen begins at the very beginning: in Egypt, circa 1200 B.C.E., when depictions of fencing matches began to turn up in artwork decorating the walls of pharaohs' temples. Fencing was widespread throughout Asia, and the Romans, too, engaged in the pastime now and then, but mostly they used it as combat training. For centuries, the sword was the primary weapon of war, but as newfangled weapons appeared on the scene, swordplay became the domain of the duelist and the sportsman. As fashions changed, and men stopped carrying swords everywhere they went, duels became more formal and eventually fell out of fashion. Swords--and their relatives, epees and foils and sabers--became primarily items of sporting equipment. Cohen traces this evolution gracefully, anchoring the story in history, offering up plenty of social and political context, and introducing us to the most notable swordsmen. A definitive history. David Pitt
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