Alex Gillis

I had purchased and read the original edition and was excited when I learned about this updated version. I gave the original one away but from what I remember, this edition is much improved. The narrative style flows much better than the previous edition.

If you practice Taekwondo then I strongly recommend that you buy and read this book. The author presents the history of it's creation with a beginning from Japanese Karate to what it is now with numerous footnotes. I had no idea of just how political and.. well... crazy the history of it is. It's filled not just with political intrigue but also espionage and assassinations (attempts and actual). Wow.

There are still a few issues I have with the book. The writing style from time-to-time falls into a clunky delivery that reads like a direct translation from another language into English. There a few times when some bit of history gets inserted without being properly introduced and it's appears like we should have known about it. Some things are repeated and written multiple times and each time as if it's being introduced for the first time. And the five tenets of Taekwondo are never really discussed in much detail and there's nothing about how they were developed and introduced into the martial art.

A note about the publisher. Once you buy the book you can send your purchasing information to them and receive a free ecopy of it which is very cool. A hard copy for the home library and an ecopy to carry with you. A very nice perk!

To finish up, even though I wrote a long paragraph about the few issues I have with the book, this really is 5-star book. Anyone who aspires to earn a black belt in Taekwondo really needs to read the book in order to know the history of it.… (meer)