Customer Rating: 
Summary: Martial Musings - Robert W. Smith
Comment: Mr. Smith is a "wordsmith" in the truest sense. You can feel the authors qi, as he writes about the chinese masters that he has inter-acted with over the years. It has been my pleasure recently to meet R. W. Smith and visit with him. This book is a must for the library of any serious person who studies any of the martial arts.
Phillip W. Koeppel
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Avoid
Comment: Anyone who says that Muhammad Ali was an overweight light-heavyweight with the punch of a pillow and couldn't stand with the earlier heavyweights (who incidentally were smaller than Ali,"an overweight light-heavy")should not have there opinions on fighting arts taken seriously.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not that amusing
Comment: Robert W. Smith is arguably the foremost expert on history/theory of the internal Chinese Martial Arts in the West. He wrote several books in the Sixties and Seventies about these arts. These books were well written, well illustrated and informative. His book with the late Donn Draeger, Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts, was the standard book on Martial Arts for many years. Smith must be credited with opening up a new world to Westerners: that of the mystical Chinese Martial Arts in which myths and stories of invincible masters that could perform the most miraculous feats using their Chi or internal energy abound.
I bought Martial Musings a few years ago with a special offer in which I didn't have to pay for postage. The book cost me a lot of money anyway and I was pretty disappointed in its contents. The book starts out OK. We find some interesting anecdotes about Western boxing and the formative years of Judo in the West. However the book soon turns into a longwinded promotion tour of the internal Chinese martial arts. Smith thinks these arts are superior to other martial arts but doesn't make clear how or why. There are hardly any photographs with techniques in this book. Devoting a chapter to famous fiction writers Smith met in a Martial Arts book is preposterous. The chapters on Jon Bluming and Hung I Hsiang give a hint of what this book could have been like if the author had sticked to the assignment.
The whole title of the book is a misnomer: more than half the book is about Tai Chi and the Martial Arts of South East Asia, for instance, are not covered at all. Smith seems to have been blind to what has been happening in the Martial Arts world the last few decades. Competitions like the UFC have proved the effectiveness of full contact training, grappling and cross training. I am my no means against internal Martial Arts. I believe in Chi and have seen the Shaolin monks perform amazing stunts. These developments should be approached with an open mind that Smith doesn't seem to have.
The lowest point in the book is the chapter about Bruce Lee. It is not only disrespectful towards the man that did more to popularise the martial arts than anyone else, it contains many factual mistakes. Bruce Lee DID train in internal Martial Arts. Tai Chi was the first Martial Art he trained in (he was taught by his father).
Conclusion: this book will only be worth your money if you're a T'ai Chi practitioner, otherwise you could better spend it elsewhere.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Martial musings by an old curmudgeon
Comment: Robert Smith has written some great work and has done a lot for the martial arts. He is quite knowledgeable about the internal Chinese arts and judo, and has led a very interesting life. For the martial arts enthusiast, his experiences and the training opportunities he's had are quite enviable.Nevertheless, in this book, he comes across as a cantankerous old man who constantly whines about how much better everything was "back in my day." Thus, boxers like Muhammad Ali aren't fit to lick the boots of old timers like Joe Louis -- and let's not even talk about Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis or Evander Holyfield; movies today, especially kung fu flicks, have no redeeming social value (yes, that last bit was a BIG SHOCK to me too); and society is crass and shallow and worthless. I half expected him to start telling me how weak, worthless, and evil we all are because we didn't walk 25 miles in bare feet in the snow to go to school every day, and only after plowing a 200-acre farm and saving 40 orphans from starving and how nothing written after Shakespeare died has been worth anything other than toilet paper.
He is also a little too sure that he has seen everything there is that is worth seeing, and bought into the party line given by his teachers, who, while great martial artists, cannot be described as without bias. His northern-style and internal arts teachers told him that the northern Chinese styles and the internal styles are the greatest and the southern Chinese styles and harder more external styles are useless. Thus, it must be true, according to Smith. The fact is, most martial artists think their style is the greatest, and they can't all be right.
Smith also unfairly denigrates a lot of people who have put in a lot of dedication and done much for the martial arts. Bruce Lee's skill as compared to the great martial artists of the 20th century is debatable, but his positive influence cannot be disputed. Likewise for the Gracies, who, whatever you might say about their style, have the guts to repeatedly put it all on the line for everyone to see. Smith also takes a mean-spirited swipe at Jackie Chan's martial arts skills and his movies, despite the fact that Jackie is, from all reports, a really nice guy who has always freely admitted that he doesn't consider himself a martial arts master, and despite the fact that his movies have made millions smile.
So don't take Smith's ramblings in this book as the gospel, but treat it as an interesting set of memoirs and anecdotes from a life well lived.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Delightfull musings
Comment: Robert Smith has a delightfull writing style. He doesnt suffer fools gladly and is more than willing to put down others he sees as inferior or fraudulent. Sadly this is the case as the martial arts in the USA has become a great big joke. Fortunately the current spate of full contact contests (pancrase,ufc,k-1) as well as renewed interest in muay thai, savate and judo are helping to change that. Smiths background is IMPECABLE-a masters degree and CIA analyst who trained in Japan and Taiwain. His contemporaries were Draeger, Bluming and Geesink. Anyone who knows who these folks were knows that he was in mighty good company.
