Being a Qigong healer and practitioner these many years I found this book to be beautifully produced with many interesting little nuggets of information. This is in no way a “how to” book, but an analysis of the concept of “Qi” in all its manifestations.
We have chapters dealing with Qi and the literary tradition, philosophy, the arts, medicine (interesting link is made between Qi in medicine and in shamanic dance), Qigong, the martial arts and daily life. The tricky subject of internal alchemy is particularly well-handled. The bibliography and index are satisfactorily detailed and the book is well-illustrated with extensive quotations from classical Chinese texts.
There is considerable etymological analysis of relevant Chinese characters and terms. Did you know for example that there is a special character coined by Taoists to express their personal notion of Qi?
Unfortunately there is some questionable scholarship, for example the authors just blindly accept that Chuang Tzu was the author of the Taoist Classics “Zhi Bei You (Zhi travels North)” and “Ke Yi“, thus making the works appear to be authoritative. Likewise some of the stories about famous Tai Chi Chuan and Shaolin masters and their use of Qi would seem to be classic examples of Munchausen syndrome
Jim MacRitchie, all round nice guy and ex President of the North American Qigong Association once assured me that Qigong was a modern term coined some time after WWII; I told him I was dubious and can now refute his asseveration. The authors reveal that the term, as far as they could ascertain, was first used in the Taoist text “Records of The Clear Mirror of Religion” by Xu Xun during the Jin dynasty (265-420 AD) though the term Qigong it seems was not widely used until after 1949.
Finally if you are looking to get a detailed well-written account of “Qi” this is the book for you.