Matthew Polly was a grade school bully magnet 98-pound weakling. Full of self doubts, he decided to study kung fu and and kick boxing at the legendary Shaolin Monastery in 1992 and 1993. Whatever the faults he sought to fix by going there, dilettantism wasn’t one of them: the tough training he underwent in China was the real thing. His account of those years is funny, self-deprecating, and vivid; it includes lively and usually affectionate word portraits of the monks and his fellow students it 1990′s China.
It’s too bad the book isn’t more current, but the final section on Polly’s 2003 return to Shaolin and the changes he saw there adds a poignant close
Regarding the phrase “iron crotch” in the subtitle: male readers should be sitting when they read that part of the book.