Attack Proof by J. Perkins, A. Ridenhour og M. Kovsky

ere is a completely different and in some ways refreshing approach to physical self-defense: "Attack Proof: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Protection". The main author here is John Perkins, a former police officer and police instructor from New York. It comes as no surprise that he has very little positive things to say about the traditional budo/martial arts as means of self-defense. But wait, the man's got more than a few good points, in fact there's quite a few of them.

This is a book that seems to be aimed at the more extreme end of the scale. Let's put it this way: You won't find many defenses against someone grabbing your wrist, or talk about getting in touch with your inner self in this book. This is at the same time both the strenght and the weakness of a book that in all other respect is a very interesting one. It seems that the authors have a preset mind, telling the reader that all violence is extreme, needing extreme measures. If you consider the autors' backgrounds (american army and police), this may seem to explain some of the views that they hold.

You'll find many stories in the book. These are here either to explain (in the authors' opinion) why and how the traditional martial arts fail (mostly directed towards the lack of realism in the training, or outright mysticism you may find some places), or they show various extreme episodes that the authors or their colleagues have dealt with. As for the critical voice towards some of the traditional martial arts, I find that quite in order actually. On the other hand there's a lot of machismo and extreme arrests, fights against armed opponents, violent psychiatric patients, gangs, and what have you not.

In the beginning of the book there's some information about awareness and other important parts of personal safety. The main parts of the book is about various physical self-defense methods and ways to train these techniques. This is not a book about "inner peace, harmony and balance" (just in case you wondered... :-)

The various theories on self-defense, fighting and training are different to put it mildly. And this is not really a criticism. I would rather say that it takes some time to adapt to a different way of thinking and doing things. To an outsider it may seem like some of this is a mixture of kung fu, thai-boxing and kali. Most of the times it is really hard and direct - "hit and run".

If you're after something that may challenge you, and that may shake your belief systems, your style or your own ideas - then this is a book to do just that. Just pretend you don't see all the "tough guy" talk, and you're in for an interesting read!

Back to the page: books (click here)