Defendu, William E. FairbairnAa's seminal manual on close-quarters combat, is finally available in a quality reprint edition. Originally published in 1926, the book was the first to present FairbairnAa's hard-core system of close-in fighting under the name by which it became legendary among practitioners of no-holds-barred self-defense and battlefield skills. Through Defendu and his other revolutionary books (including Scientific Self-Defence, Get Tough and All-In Fighting), as well as his years spent training members of the Shanghai Municipal Police in the 1930s and elite-unit soldiers during World War II, W.E. Fairbairn probably had more influence on the evolution of practical hand-to-hand combat than any other individual in modern history. As U.S. Marine Corps veteran and CQC expert Kelly McCann writes in the exclusive foreword to PaladinAa's reprint edition, ''W.E. Fairbairn contributed more to the knowledge base of how to kill the enemy in close quarters than perhaps anyone else.'' Paladin spent years actively searching for a copy of Defendu through the Internet, out-of-print book outlets, rare-book shops and military book specialists before we found one we could borrow to make this reprint edition possible. So it is with great pride that we add this highly sought volume, with an insightful foreword by best-selling author Kelly McCann to our library of Combat Classic titles.