Chen Wei-Ming's Compendium on Taiji Sword:Volume 1~Translation of Text

I got this to remind myself of the form I used to know many years ago. It goes through each stance (move) and explains the Chinese name and how it is performed, making a little more sense of how the moves are named than what I had been given previously. There are old photographs and paintings of the moves, which makes it feel a bit of a historical review as well. There is also some biographical information in the beginning. For someone who hasn't learned this before, it might be helpful to supplement the book with a video of someone going through the whole form so you can see all the intermediary movements that you may not grasp from the summaries.

Illustrations are excellent

This book was meant to be a superficial introduction to the Yang Style Taiji Jian form. The text hasn't aged well, and despite having pictures, it doesn't show the transitional movements that flow from one technique to another. Ironically, you'll only understand the instructions if you already know the Yang Style sword form, due to the way the text was translated. Sometimes, they will show the wrong photo to the movement. If you really want to learn the form, there are better books and videos in existence for that.For those who already know the form but want more in-depth information, just get Volume 2. It has almost all of the original text from this book in it, plus all of the additional annotations.