Lynn Xu Xu itibaren 4662 Kohlwehr, Rakousko itibaren 4662 Kohlwehr, Rakousko

The title does not lie, it is a book about the development of the sword. An even better title might be "Egypt is awesome and every other ancient culture was stupid." At times long-winded, convoluted, and blatantly racist and prejudiced against many cultures, there is still some interesting information (if you like edgy weapons) within its pages. The evolution of weapons structure is described in terms of materials, metallurgy, size, cross-sectional shape, physics of the fighting style of the time (e.g., penchant for slicing or thrusting attacks and defensive maneuvers). The numerous illustrations are wonderful. Unfortunately, Burton often really takes his time to get to the good bits about the weapons, spending pages setting up the historical context, but which reading now reveals the material as biased, outdated and potentially unreliable. Another downer is that there were supposed to be additional volumes; as a result this book ends prior to the start of the medieval period. So just as swords were just starting to resemble what I think of as swords, the book ends. You will have to look elsewhere to see sword development through the Medieval, Renaissance, and the Modern periods. Dang, and I had struggled so diligently through all that metallurgy stuff.