"The Samurai: The Philosophy of Victory" By Robert T. Samuel is a so so book at best.Some of the information came from sources such as the Book of five rings and Hagakure, these sources are sometimes biased and often did not refer to samurai culture but just the lives of the author. A frightening note is that the rest of the material seems ot be directly plagarized from both internet rescources, such as the Samurai Archives and material written by Dr. Stephen Turnbull. Overall I defintly cannot recomend this book.

The Samurai:The Philosophy Of Victory is a hodgepodge of fiction, history, and excerpts from several well known (if historically misleading) Japanese books such as Book Of The Five Rings and Hagakure. At its best, it provides the reader with entertaining light reading along with plenty of attractive illustrations. However, the book has several problems, the most serious of which deals with plagiarized material. The entire 'Famous Samurai' section along with the accompanying illustrations was taken uncredited and without permission from the informative samurai-archives. Other sections of the book appear to have been lifted from the website as well. In addition, other illustrations and text have seemingly been taken from noted Samurai author Stephen Turnbull's books-again, uncredited and without permission. In addition, the book is full of errors both big and small. For example, in the aforementioned 'Famous Samurai' list, the author has replaced the correct term 'Shugo' (meaning provincial constable or military governor) with the incorrect term 'Shogun'. The book Tanki Yoriaku is identified as Hi Ko Ben (which was in fact the subtitle). There's more, but that should give you a general idea. This being the author's first effort, one would hope that he would improve upon the accuracy of its content and especially upon receiving permission to reprint the copyrighted work of others before trying again.