Amazon.com description: Product Description: Fundamentals of Italian Rapier: A Modern Manual for Teachers and Students of Historical Fencing offers a comprehensive theoretical foundation for seventeenth-century rapier fencing. This book pairs descriptions of fencing techniques with over a hundred images, explaining the underlying reasoning for each fencing action as well as offering drills and exercises designed to help students internalize the three fundamentals of Italian rapier fencing: modo, misura, and tempo (technique, measure, and timing). Through a synthesis of Italian fencing manuals for an English-speaking readership, Dori and David Coblentz offer a resource that is both sensitive to historical context and aware of modern trends in fencing instruction.