New Evangelista Books
With a half-century of fencing mastery under his belt, Nick Evangelista—author of The Art and Science of Fencing, The Inner Game of Fencing, and The Encyclopedia of the Sword—has ingeniously woven principles from Behavioral Psychology into a revolutionary teaching approach. This method, perhaps best described as teaching without teaching, focuses not on deciphering the origins of certain behaviors but on devising interventions to preempt issues. For over twenty years, Maestro Evangelista has been harnessing these techniques to elevate his own instruction. While this book is primarily crafted for fencing instructors, it also serves as a valuable resource for individual fencers striving to identify and eliminate persistent challenges in their practice.
A must resource for those who wish to reach beyond their present ideas about teaching and learning to fence.
Clash of Steel is a collection of twenty essays by fencing master Nick Evangelista dealing with the differences between sport fencing and the traditional game he grew up with under the tutelage of famed fencing master Ralph Faulkner. These issues are underscored by Evangelista’s own personal approach to fencing, a philosophy formulated over the past fifty-five years, as an uplifting personal life skill as opposed to an electronically-driven, videoesque game. Already attacked for years by the sport community, the Maestro is confident that what he has written in this volume will bring the wrath of modern fencing down upon him; but he is used to that. After writing about the travesty of the fencing exhibited in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, he received emails laden with viruses from as far away as France sent by those who obviously did not share his point of view. It’s ironic that once upon a time assassins came in through the window; now they come in through Windows. But recognizing these electronic hit-mailings for what they were, he deftly parried them. It is amazing how the fencing mind manifests far beyond the confines of the fencing strip.
In the end, Evangelista’s real goal isn’t to rid the world of sport fencing, which, he says, has every right to do whatever it is that it does, but to remind the readers of his work that traditional fencing still exists and is available in the world.
Fighting with Sticks, a history of stick weapons—wooden swords, staves, clubs, and fighting sticks--was first published in 1998, and continued as a bestseller until its publisher retired from the publishing business a decade later. The book is now back in print, but not as a mere reprint, but as a legitimate second edition. Although most of the original text is included, this version has been expanded to include material not published in the original because of space limitations. This is the Fighting with Sticks that the author, Nick Evangelista, envisioned when he first conceived the book.