Martial Arts Training Manuals

Someone else who believes that gongfu is entirely about fighting are Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo, authors of Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, A Historical Survey. I read the whole book, it's got lots of great pictures and historical information. It's easy to summarize their view: Martial Arts is a job. Whatever, it's still a great idea for a book. They summarize about 30 different historic training manuals. One of my favorite facts from the book is that it was illegal to publish martial arts books for most of the Ching Dynasty (1650 to 1900~).