By the Sword cover art

By the Sword

A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

By the Sword

By: Richard Cohen
Narrated by: Richard Cohen
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Napoleon fenced. So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who as a schoolboy would practice fencing with Bess - his future wife - when the two of them returned home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Ignatius Loyola challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ's divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was "off to get spaghetti," their code to avoid alarming the children.

By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting - a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.

©2002, 2008 Narrative Tension, Inc. (P)2020 Tantor Combat Sports & Self-Defense Martial Arts Military Olympics & Paralympics Sports History Weapons & Warfare World Sports War Fencing Sport

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Miyamoto Musashi cover art
Paradoxes of Defence cover art
The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps cover art
The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America cover art
The Ill-Made Knight cover art
Autumn Lightning cover art
The Book of Man cover art
The Sacred Band cover art
Bare Knuckle Boxing cover art
1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year cover art
1964 - The Greatest Year in the History of Japan cover art
The Essential Englishman cover art
The First Samurai cover art
Bygone Badass Broads cover art
Samurai Rising cover art
Striking Distance cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Not meaning to sound unkind: the story was fantastic but I couldn't understand a word the narrator said, really I think this book deserved a professional reader to match the excellent writing. I'll need to find a paperback copy to finish it.

Great writing let down by narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An excellent book, well researched and presented. But the reader's accent is so heavy and the quality of recording so poor that it's almost impossible to understand.

Performance ruins a great book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.