jslaker
06-16-2012, 04:27 PM
I bought this one a whim on my Kindle earlier this week. I'm always on the lookout for new material that might give me a bit of a lightbulb moment and help me advance my shooting, and this seemed like it might be a decent candidate.
The book is essentially written in a survey style broken down into three main sections. It begins with an introduction, which essentially walks through the evolution of handgun technique over the past few decades. It then moves into what Stanford calls the "Postmodern Technique of the Pistol"; a rather amusing branding of modern iso meant to contrast with the Weaver-based Modern technique (more on that later). The meat of the book wraps up with a run through of gun handling and the draw stroke.
To be perfectly honest, after a read-through, I'm not entirely sure who this book is aimed at.
The selection of topics covered is thorough, and would be great used as a skeleton for teaching a new shooter. But I don't think I'd recommend this book to a new shooter because of a few areas where I found it to be a bit weak. The first problem is that the pacing of information felt off to me. The chapters on fundamental topics like the trigger press and sight picture are relatively short, while a fair amount of page space is dedicated to things like close-in fighting or considerations for firing from unorthodox positions that I don't believe would have much value for a neophyte trying to get rounds on paper.
At the same time, the survey style of the book limits its value for those who have a bit more trigger time under their belts. It covers a lot of topics, and while its treatment of each is accurate and fair, it generally does so in a rather shallow nature. While he usually does a good job of covering the fundamentals of the topics he addresses, Stanford can get a bit tautological in his explanations of the why of given techniques at times. I still have no clue why he advocates that right-handers perform slide manipulation with an overhand rack, while lefties use a slingshot instead, for example.
One of the books biggest problems, in my opinion, has nothing to do with its instructional technique, but rather its commentary. Stanford spends an inordinate amount of time on Weaver bashing. The book starts with a treatise on why modern iso is better than Weaver, and there are very few chapters that don't include some sort of aside about why Weaver sucks. Dude, I get it. It's really to a level that I found outright distracting. I don't care about why what other guys are doing sucks, tell me why what you're advocating is good. The vast majority of mentions of the Weaver in the book could be eliminated, and it'd be a better book for it.
The book finally wraps up with a pair of appendices. The first is a list of recommended resources. The next is a brief list of recommended drills for training. Like the rest of the book, these sections suffer a bit from brevity. That said, the drills section alone made the $10 I spent on the book worth it, as I'd never come across Ron Avery's trigger bar drill before, and it sounds exactly like what I've been looking for in a drill recently.
Overall, it's certainly not a bad book. I could see it being a great companion to an instructor-led class, as it does do a very good job of giving a rough outline of pistol handling technique accompanied by numerous photos demonstrating what's being described.
It just wasn't what I was looking for, and I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to. I feel that the coverage of a few fundamental areas was too brief for a beginner. The book is also largely written within the context of the Modern technique, so there are places I was able to fill-in-the-blanks where I'm uncertain somebody coming from a state of tabula rasa would. For more advanced shooters, the lack of depth is equally problematic; there's just not much here that would be new or explained in a particularly profound manner.
This book probably would be a good fit for someone that has decided to move to a modern isosceles after having been a prior devotee of the Modern technique, but that's a narrow and increasingly shrinking niche. If this describes you, I'd say go ahead and pick this one up. If not, my feeling is that the same information can be found covered elsewhere, often with better depth.
EDIT for post-script:
I just happened to think to check the original publication date on Amazon: this book was originally printed in 2001. In that context, it makes a lot more sense. It predates the days where forums like this one existed which can have individual threads covering many of the same topics that Stanford's book does but in greater depth. In that light, it's actually kind of interesting from a meta perspective. I just feel that it's lost a lot of its value to the sheer wealth of freely available information on the web today.
So add "luddite grandpa that hates the internet and all things computers" to my recommended audience. :cool:
The book is essentially written in a survey style broken down into three main sections. It begins with an introduction, which essentially walks through the evolution of handgun technique over the past few decades. It then moves into what Stanford calls the "Postmodern Technique of the Pistol"; a rather amusing branding of modern iso meant to contrast with the Weaver-based Modern technique (more on that later). The meat of the book wraps up with a run through of gun handling and the draw stroke.
To be perfectly honest, after a read-through, I'm not entirely sure who this book is aimed at.
The selection of topics covered is thorough, and would be great used as a skeleton for teaching a new shooter. But I don't think I'd recommend this book to a new shooter because of a few areas where I found it to be a bit weak. The first problem is that the pacing of information felt off to me. The chapters on fundamental topics like the trigger press and sight picture are relatively short, while a fair amount of page space is dedicated to things like close-in fighting or considerations for firing from unorthodox positions that I don't believe would have much value for a neophyte trying to get rounds on paper.
At the same time, the survey style of the book limits its value for those who have a bit more trigger time under their belts. It covers a lot of topics, and while its treatment of each is accurate and fair, it generally does so in a rather shallow nature. While he usually does a good job of covering the fundamentals of the topics he addresses, Stanford can get a bit tautological in his explanations of the why of given techniques at times. I still have no clue why he advocates that right-handers perform slide manipulation with an overhand rack, while lefties use a slingshot instead, for example.
One of the books biggest problems, in my opinion, has nothing to do with its instructional technique, but rather its commentary. Stanford spends an inordinate amount of time on Weaver bashing. The book starts with a treatise on why modern iso is better than Weaver, and there are very few chapters that don't include some sort of aside about why Weaver sucks. Dude, I get it. It's really to a level that I found outright distracting. I don't care about why what other guys are doing sucks, tell me why what you're advocating is good. The vast majority of mentions of the Weaver in the book could be eliminated, and it'd be a better book for it.
The book finally wraps up with a pair of appendices. The first is a list of recommended resources. The next is a brief list of recommended drills for training. Like the rest of the book, these sections suffer a bit from brevity. That said, the drills section alone made the $10 I spent on the book worth it, as I'd never come across Ron Avery's trigger bar drill before, and it sounds exactly like what I've been looking for in a drill recently.
Overall, it's certainly not a bad book. I could see it being a great companion to an instructor-led class, as it does do a very good job of giving a rough outline of pistol handling technique accompanied by numerous photos demonstrating what's being described.
It just wasn't what I was looking for, and I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to. I feel that the coverage of a few fundamental areas was too brief for a beginner. The book is also largely written within the context of the Modern technique, so there are places I was able to fill-in-the-blanks where I'm uncertain somebody coming from a state of tabula rasa would. For more advanced shooters, the lack of depth is equally problematic; there's just not much here that would be new or explained in a particularly profound manner.
This book probably would be a good fit for someone that has decided to move to a modern isosceles after having been a prior devotee of the Modern technique, but that's a narrow and increasingly shrinking niche. If this describes you, I'd say go ahead and pick this one up. If not, my feeling is that the same information can be found covered elsewhere, often with better depth.
EDIT for post-script:
I just happened to think to check the original publication date on Amazon: this book was originally printed in 2001. In that context, it makes a lot more sense. It predates the days where forums like this one existed which can have individual threads covering many of the same topics that Stanford's book does but in greater depth. In that light, it's actually kind of interesting from a meta perspective. I just feel that it's lost a lot of its value to the sheer wealth of freely available information on the web today.
So add "luddite grandpa that hates the internet and all things computers" to my recommended audience. :cool: