Unfortunately for myself and many others who study karate history, Funakoshi never goes into much detail about much of anything. He almost never gives a date and he rarely, if ever says where he learned any of his kata or other practices.
The material on his teachers (Itosu and Azato primarily) is in summary form, never mentioning more than anecdotes. There are no dates, mentions of other students they had, what they taught etc...
Over all, this kind of book is about real karate, certainly enough to get a young mind going in the right direction about karate. It is well written, we can probably thank the translator for that. It contains some interesting material that is fun to read. Beyond that, it lacks detail to keep you interested for long.
Most of Funakoshi's books are like this for history. For the real meat of Funakoshi's karate (rather than this introduction), take a look at "Karate-do Kyohan", which contains much more technical information.
