{"id":5080,"date":"2018-08-28T17:14:25","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T21:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=5080"},"modified":"2018-08-28T17:14:25","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T21:14:25","slug":"two-excellent-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/two-excellent-books\/","title":{"rendered":"TWO EXCELLENT BOOKS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently read two books I\u2019d like to share with you.\u00a0 When I first saw Rory Miller\u2019s work, I thought \u201cHere\u2019s a guy who has been there, done that, and makes sense.\u201d That impression was reinforced later when I met the man and had a chance to talk shop with him at some length. His long background in Corrections has exposed him deeply to \u201cthe face of the enemy,\u201d and given him much real world experience within which to correlate his extensive background in the martial arts.\u00a0 Rory got together with Lawrence Kane to write \u201cScaling Force: Dynamic Decision-Making Under Threat of Violence\u201d (YMAA Publication Center, 2012).\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first half of \u201cScaling Force\u201d is a well-presented overview of the nature and psychology of physical violence.\u00a0 The second half goes through the old six-step force continuum, at each point explaining how things work with lots of examples from real life cases.\u00a0 Level 1 is Presence: how not to be the you-know-what who inadvertently starts a fight, and how to make it clear to a predator that you are not prey. Level 2 is Voice, and the authors do a superb job of presenting vocal de-escalation tactics whether it\u2019s a family gathering that becomes argumentative or something more serious. Level 3 is touch, from calming influence to redirection. At Level 4 things get more serious with empty hand restraint and physical control. Level 5 is Less-Lethal force, from hard blows to potentially neck-breaking holds to pepper spray and the TASER\u2122.\u00a0 It tops out at Level 6, Lethal Force.\u00a0 All is presented with logic and understanding of both law and ethics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Marc MacYoung and Jenna Meek are old friends of mine, and together they wrote \u201cWhat You Don\u2019t Know Can Kill You: How Most Self-Defense Training Will Put You In Prison or In the Ground\u201d (Carry-On Publishing, 2018).\u00a0 Jenna teaches firearms along with her husband Jeff, and Marc is famous for his books on hand-to-hand fighting, the use of the knife, and related topics. Together they make it clear that on one end of the spectrum, \u201cJust let the criminal take what he wants\u201d is poor advice if what he wants to take is your life. They make it just as clear on the other end of the spectrum that the common martial arts \u201cdance of death\u201d sequence in which you stomp on your opponent\u2019s neck after he\u2019s down and out can end with you having some very unpleasant experiences in the prison showers.<\/p>\n

Each of these books would make a useful gift for many in your life, particularly those lovable friends and relatives who think the world is full of moonbeams and butterflies and that people who would harm innocent others are creatures of a paranoiac\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read two books I\u2019d like to share with you.\u00a0 When I first saw Rory Miller\u2019s work, I thought \u201cHere\u2019s a guy who has been there, done that, and makes sense.\u201d That impression was reinforced later when I met the man and had a chance to talk shop with him at some length. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5080"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5082,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions\/5082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}