Wing Chun Kung Fu: Traditional Chinese Kung Fu for Self-Defense and Health, by Grandmaster Ip Chun, with Michael Tse. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

1890, Checkley released an explosive little book titled A Natural Method of Physical Training: Making Muscle and Reducing Flesh Without Dieting or Apparatus.

Pursuit—walk, run, crawl. Escape—climb, balance, jump, swim. Attack—throw, lift, fight.

Get Tough! How to Win in Hand-to-Hand Fighting, as Taught to the British Commandos, and the U.S. Armed Forces, by W. E. Fairbairn. Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press, 1974.

these things were done out of wantonness and lust.” Plutarch did such a remarkable job, Parallel Lives became the handbook for modern history’s heroes.

How to Be a Spy: The World War II SOE Training Manual. Toronto: Dundurn Group, 2001. This is the actual training syllabus and method guidelines developed by Fairbairn and Sykes and other instructors for use by wartime SOE agents.

We’re hardwired by nature to find common social ground, to believe that whatever we’re doing today is normal and not much different from the way people have always behaved.

Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero.

Because we have to answer to one another, and they did not.