In the book American Shaolin written by Matthew Polly is about a young adult who acknowledges his defaults and problems and searches out to fix them in different peculiar ways. He decides to leave his dream school, Princeton, leave his home, country and search for the Shaolin Temple to learn Kung Fu without any clues from the internet. He learns how to speak different kinds of Chines languages to help him cope with his decision and assist him to finding this mysterious temple and this overcomes his ignorance. Eventually after a couple weeks he finally finds the temple from speaking to villagers that live in different cities and this helps fix his cowardly personality. Once he arrives he begins his rigorous training and lives with only the necessities needed to survive and this eventually turns him into a man from a boy. As he is there for a long time he decides to practice Buddhism and comes to agree that the Catholic religion is far better and less foreign which helps him fix his confusion with his spirituality.

There were many positive and a few negative things that were consisted in this book. To start the book was very clear and easy to ready that gave no struggle to the reader. There was also many new vocabulary words and insights on how to pronounce different words that the Chinese language uses. This surprisingly helps a lot throughout the book with the weird names Matthew provides for us. This story is completely true and he tells it all from his perspective and explains how he feels about different scenarios. There was not a ton of description in the book about the smaller things, but the point was made through the broad spectrum. Mathew also changes a lot throughout the book and kept the reader on their seat because of the new things he was learning and discovering. He made the reader feel as if they were his friend going through his struggles with him. At times when he started learning a new religion, it was difficult to agree with what he was doing. Overall I loved the book, kept me on my seat and wanting to learn more about Chinese culture and the art of Kung Fu.