The book is engaging from the start. This is one of those books that you pick up and become absorbed within the first few pages. The only drawback is that after a thundering start it lags a bit in the middle before shifting to a more thoughtful, profound conclusion.

I personally got to read this book while developing some material on leadership and quickly saw its use in a number of fields. Musashi's life was a meshing of the typical and atypical Samurai (Bushido); he was certainly unique in his accomplishment (and sometimes outlook). Miyamoto Musashi is probably more Western-friendly simply because of his independent streak, always following his own (if borrowed) path to a truer "way". William Scott Wilson's research is thorough and cuts across a lot of fields. While Musashi's life was interdisciplinary itself, Wilson's writing ties together the obvious and not so obvious very well, crossing borders of philosophy, art, anthropology, and even alchemy with seeming ease. It is also clear when Wilson is espousing opinion and when he's citing fact (always useful when looking a mythical, mystical characters).

In conclusion, this is the best Western summary of the life of Musashi or any other known Samurai. The stories will always remain intriguing and Wilson does a nice job of tying his life together as if he were there all along.

For most Americans, Eiji Yoshikawa's fictional novel, Musashi continued to be the most vivid view of this legendary samurai warrior, Miyamoto Musashi. Yoshikawa's image of Musashi proves to be hard to shake. To reinforced that image, the three "Samurai Trilogy" movies starring Toshiro Mifune which was based on Yoshikawa's book, totally popularized Yoshikawa's Musashi. This is mostly due to the fact that Yoshikawa's book is probably the only book in the English language that dealt with Musashi's life in detail and even came out in popular paperback series in the 1990s. However, thanks to Wilson's new book, that is no longer the case.

The Lone Samurai is the first English language biography on Miyamoto Musashi ever published. The book is highly readable, informative and considering the limited primary sources, pretty well researched. I seem to get the feeling that the author was trying to do his best to debunked the popular Yoshikawa's Musashi to the real man and his life. Musashi as a real man, still remains somewhat of a mystery to most historians. The book really isn't that thick and its pretty reflective on the lack of information on the subject. However, the author was pretty successful in presenting the facts in the simplist and most effective way possible for American readers for whom Japanese history, zen and culture may be bit confusing. I also enjoyed the maps presented in the book, one which traces Musashi's journey through life which I thought to be well designed.

One of the few weaknesses I thought the book could used was that it could have probably used some diagrams illustrating Musashi's style and what make it stand out so much. If anyone out there have seen that movie "Kill Bill Vol. 1", Lucy Liu's character start her fight against Uma Thurman in a classical Musashi style.

I should also point out that there isn't that much background information on Musashi's time period in this book so it would help if the reader have little background on the late Sengoku Period of Japan and the Tokugawa take over.

Overall, a well written and highly informative book on the life and time of Miyamoto Musashi, one of Japan's premier experts on swordmanship and concepts that goes behind it.