Here’s the book review of “Meditations on Violence” by Rory Miller I promised a while ago. I met Rory a while ago and he’s become a friend of mine, just so you know where I’m coming from. That said, we don’t agree on everything (that would be boring…) so I feel comfortable enough writing an honest and objective review of his bestselling book.

Here goes:

 

Book review: Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller

Meditations on Violence starts with a foreword by Steve Barnes, followed by a short introduction and preface.

Chapter one covers “The Matrix” but Keanu Reeves doesn’t show up anywhere so don’t worry. Instead,Rory explains a tactical and strategic framework that helps you determine what your martial arts is best suited for.

The next chapter covers “how to think” and gives you some interesting concepts on how to approach learning and training for self defense or martial arts. Rory talks about how you can fool yourself easily, even if you’ve trained for a long time. He also takes a critical look at the different sources knowledge can come from and how to think in the moment when you’re smack in the middle of a fight.

Then we move on to the different types of violence where he describes the common characteristics of real-world violence and the human body’s reaction to it. Another topic is how violence is time-related and happens in specific places. [Read more…]