[Rivkin]

Dear All,

1. "Crap" was a characteristic of some of my earlier posts.
2. I apologize if I misunderstood your words, Mr. Ko. It is indeed a cultural thing.

3. What I mean with all this stuff about peace, is that even if we would have a "peace agreement", I would not have written something drastically different, but who knows, I have tried to be more or less objective, but probably failed, I can not be a judge of that. I have nothing against any posts on SFI, by any authors, including the one you call "monster" on SFI. I welcome them and have no problem with their existance, despite profoundly disagreeing with their nature. And yes, if the triple-cursed mekhitarist sword will come up again for the evaluation, I will still refer you to the same book.

4. I apologize for mentioning my title here, and I think it is irrelevant who we are and what we do, this was done only to say that if we go formal we need to go formal. Please adress me by my nick here - Rivkin, or by my first name - Kirill.

5. Finally I want to mention that we discuss too much my relationship with Manoucher. I have clearly stated it on top of my review, I think quite accurately.

6. Now concerning the books - there is a book by Allen and Gilmore, "Persian Steel, Tannavoli Collection". I did not like Lebedinsky's book on Caucasian weapons, but have not read the one on "Oriental" weapons. There is a number of other books, but I do believe the present book is a very good starting point, and a very good basic book on the subject.

7. I again would like to express my apologies for some of my previous words. I honestly believed that the book will be filled with "Arrani" problems, criticism of Western Myths, declarations of Arian unity, and many other things that have been stated many times in the past, often in the connection with this book. I would like to reiterate my statement, that I do not think any of those is a big concern here. There are some "territorial" (you have seen one example - Circassia) and other issues here and there (too much heroic folklore, too many times questionably names people "persian or "iranian") but in general it is a good book.

8. Finally, I think we use the word "academic" too much. Let me tell you of my experience. I am far from being honored with a publication of the size of Manoucher's work, but some time ago I did submit a 10 times smaller manuscript to some colleagues for review. Two politely replied with commentaries about font, pictures and congratulated me on my accomplishment (translation - they have not read the damn thing). The third one did read it.
The phrase written on the cover was "SHAME !!! Did not reference:". Below it was a list of articles that I failed to reference. On every page he has found something that was uncertain, or misinterpreted, or misrepresented.
Now, I swallowed my pride and implemented corrections.
The moral to it is simple - you want to be an academian, read periodic journals and reference them, extensively. Otherwise people will look at your reference list and will think that you are unaware of the current work or you simply copied lots of textbooks. Here I believe a lot of articles and books should have been referenced because they directly relate to the field, and their context should have been discussed here.
And above all - send your work for review to people who are not your super-friends, but those who will tear your work apart, for you learn from their comments, not from yours friends' praise.