What’s in Your Library?

George Washington brought them over from England by the trunkload.  At the time of his death, he had over nine hundred, a considerable number back then or even today. To develop his intellectual depth, Benjamin Franklin relied on them extensively to supplement his two years of formal education, which stopped at age ten.  George Patton carried them onto the battlefield.  General Dwight Eisenhower stressed their importance.  USMC General Jim Mattis, our current Secretary of Defense, had a personal collection of 7,000 of them.  Yes, we are talking about books.

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The International Freestyle Judo Alliance

As a follow up to my last post (Show me the evidence!) I’m happy to announce that I’ve created a Facebook group, which is dedicated to bring together the Judo community that is disenchanted with IJF’s misguided leadership.  The group is called the International Judo Freestyle Alliance.  The idea for this group comes from Steve Scott, the founder of AAU Freestyle Judo rules.  He picked my brain, asked me what I thought, and voila!  A voice of sanity.

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A History of Judo

While there are many books that cover various aspects of Judo history, they always seem to me to be incomplete, maybe even superficial.  That all changed when I read A History of Judo by 1964 British Olympian Syd Hoare, 8th Dan.  Finally, this was the book that I had been looking for.  A History of Judo was so informative and transformative that I bought out Amazon’s stock twice in order to offer the book to my assistant coaches.

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