OSC = Order of Shaolin Cowards
I finally slogged through this piece of crap what a horrid waste of time that was. I must concur with Henning's review in JAMA. What can you expect from 'vanity' publishing?
This book sucks. It is packed with misinformation. It attempts to appear well researched by citing previous publications, but even the most cursory review of the bibliography reveals that it focuses only on recent titles and only in English. In fact, there are some obvious gaffs in here that clearly indicate that the researchers lack even the most fundamental understanding of Chinese language, much less Chinese culture. It's more of a manifesto - some one obviously put a lot of work into this solely to perpetuate their agenda within their strange belt system school. I get sent a lot of manifestos - this has to be the best presentation so far, but it still lacked content.
There's two kickers to this - two outstanding things the just sent sent it over the top. One is that it comes with this little apology blow-in card. What kind of book does that? It's out of fear. Second, and this is why I call them 'cowards,' is that they refuse to identify themselves. They give all sorts of excuses for anonymity, but it's it's really ridiculous when you think about it. After all, this is the martial arts. If you can't lay your name and reputation down on the line with something that you publish, you have no right to stand amongst other martial artists that do.
I feel bad for any newbies who begin their Shaolin journey with this book. They will be so deluded. I can only hope that they can find the truth, in the end.
Never trust a nameless publication...
Glad I saved y'all some money.
I have the utmost respect for Stanley Henning's research. I wish more academicians would follow his example - it's quite courageuos since martial arts research is somewhat frowned upon amongst scholarly circles. He really is a leader in the field. Anyway, as for Tang Hao - I can't think of an English translation available, off hand. But thanks to the net, you can get pretty much anything. Can you access Chinese Google? It's quite powerful and I'm sure you'd turn up a Chinese version there.
Sal, I appreciate your comment about Amazon and am considering a review, but why haven't you posted there already?