In November 2001, ABC-CLIO published Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia. In 2002,New York Public Library named the book “Best of Reference,” and the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association named it an “Outstanding Reference Source.” After the book went out of print, the publisher asked whether we would be interested in doing a second edition. One thing led to another, and the result is this book, in which the organization is entirely different, and about 75 percent of the text is original.