Bruce Lee: A Life Hardcover – 5 Jun. 2018

This is a really well-written, well-researched and referenced book that gives it a sense of academic credibility. As mentioned, it’s a long book, but I really couldn’t put it down and looked forward to my bedtime meeting with it’s pages.I bought this try and understand the huge hype that surrounds the man, his films and his writings. After reading this account, I personally didn’t find him a likeable character being rather childish and on referring to my copy of DSM-5, possibly suffering from narcissistic personality disorder since he displayed many of the symptoms which can easily be looked up online. Working down that list, he was dismissive of other arts (the classical Kung fu master, Karate etc) thus aggrandising his own abilities, his open conversational gambit was often, “Feel my muscles” or “Attack me in any way” trying to garner admiration, he suggested his art was the best without really proving it except in a few exchanges with carefully chosen opponents, he would have ideas beyond normal motivations such as his written ‘Aims’, he was obsessed with achieving more than is seniors like McQueen and Coburn just to better them rather than to achieve something and push the acting profession to new heights. Hen belittled other martial artists, actors, writers, directors who he felt were a challenge to his ‘superior’ ideas, he had numerous affairs even telling his wife that if she ever found out he was sleeping with other women, it was only for the sex so it was acceptable because he loved her and the kids! I could go on, but you get the idea. What we’re left with as a legacy are four pretty awful films: ‘Enter the Dragon’ is passable, with his terrible over-acting and cringe-worthy dialogues about things like ‘fingers pointing at the moon’ levered awkwardly into narrative (remember, in the same year we had American Graffiti, The Day of the Jackal, The Exorcist, Papillion, Serpico, The Sting, The Wickerman etc so Lee’s films can’t be said to be ‘of their time’), derivative philosophy books with nothing new or innovative at all and a martial art that nobody else appears to be able to be anywhere near as proficient in as the founder was, suggesting it wasn’t a ‘system’ but a personal, albeit extraordinary, ability on the part of Lee. Reading about the sleazy circumstances surrounding his death made me feel unclean: he had been having sex with his mistress all afternoon, unprofessionally cancelling the meeting with a potential famous acting collaborator who had flown into Hong Kong specially to meet Lee, he’d taken recreational drugs and then, rather childishly exhausted himself by showing off (recreating all fight scenes from Game of Death) to his mistress. The author suggests this exercise, on the hottest day of that year, may have been the major contributory factor in his death.In the light of this, it is a credit to his family, the PR companies and film studios that they have managed to create and perpetuate this wholesome, deeply spiritual image of the man that was Bruce Lee, attributes doesn’t seem to have possessed.This is a fantastic book, buy and read it now!

Another great book, in better than described condition. Arrived on time. Great value.

A decent book and very interesting. The one area where I feel it lacks is that there is no chapter detailing how he became fanatical about physical exercise and training, to the point he had his own machines created, he had friends who introduced him into body building etc. This could also include testimonials from some of his students at the time to dispel all those MMA fanatics etc. who claim Bruce Lee could not fight as he never had a competition, which is clearly rubbish (see interview on youtube with Jesse Glover, Jim Kelly etc.). There are also some additional stories about fight challenges he was supposed to have had which were missing, for example the one on the set of Enter the Dragon where one set member apparently said he was no more than an actor - Bruce swiftly dealt with the individual and said "how do you like my acting now!". Presumably he had this information to hand but he had to cut it down given he had over a million words of information, and maybe Matt Polly felt much of this had already been covered elsewhere. Overall still highly recommend it.

Bruce Lee is just an amazing human! This book is so good, I brought another as a present for my brother. I have kept this book for my daughter's to read. I cannot state how much there is in this book, it's so informative, not just about him but around him as well. I learnt so much from this book that I'm going to reread it and that's something I rarely do. Thank you :)

Over the years I have read many books and articles about Bruce Lee and in my younger days was a massive fan and have many happy memories of watching all of his movies at late night viewings at the local cinema!This book is extremely well researched and well written and covers from his birth to his death and beyond. It contains many interesting facts about his life and his struggle to become an actor in the USA. It gives an insight into the man and not just the martial artist and shows his human imperfections which we all have as well as his strength of character and belief in himself to ultimately become a martial arts superstar and actor / choreographer and instructor!The book also gives a very thorough account of his death and a very scientifically plausible reason for how this could have happened to a super fit athlete!There is a lot of input from close family, friends and early students as well as film producers and writers.I enjoyed reading it and would definitely recommend it.

I must say I really enjoyed this book. It is a lot like the Bruce Thomas book Fighting Spirit but with a bit more added detail. It has a few mistakes throughout like a pic of Bruce vs Bob Baker from Fist of Fury but the caption says that it’s Bob Wall which is a mistake. Also a few annoying spelling mistakes but I can live with that as the book is filled with lots of new info about Bruce’s life. All in all an enjoyable read so I give it a solid 9.5 out of 10. 👍. If your read this book & The Beice Thomas book called Fighting Spirit then that’s all you’ll ever need to read about the life of the great Bruce Lee.

Wow...I thought I knew everything about the legend that is Bruce Lee. But I was wrong! And on this occasion I was happy to be wrong! There is a lot of information contained here that I've not seen elsewhere (admittedly I have not read "Fighting Spirit" which other reviewers have commented about).I could not put it down, it was highly readable and expertly written. I devoured it in about 3 days.I guess the best compliment I could provide would be that if I had a biography written about my life, this would be the template of how I'd like it done!I actually loved the early chapters of this book detailing Bruce's heritage & lineage. It explained the background of his parents and how they met. I'd never seen that anywhere before.

As above

Finalmente uma biografia completa, perfeita, sem achismos ou ficções (comuns em biografias) sobre a vida de um ícone cultural que ultrapassa a barreira de um único segmento (artes marciais), afinal Bruce Lee além de filósofo, foi responsável pela quebra de diversos paradigmas nas artes do entretenimento graças a sua disciplina e perseverança. recomendo a todos a leitura de sua biografia e se surpreendam com a história de uma pessoa que ganhou status de lenda e não foi a toa.Alex (Rio de Janeiro) @gastrolex

Bellissimo libro da circa 500 pagine. Molto interessante, sincero ed informativo. Adesso ho la sensazione di conoscere il M° Lee. Il libro non solo documenta la sua infanzia, la sua carriera da artista marziale ed attore, ma contiene anche racconti sulle sue amicizie con personaggi del cinema e da uno sguardo alle sue filosofie ed abitudini. Veramente molto interessante.

Very nice book... Ignore the 1 star review you can buy this book....💯💯💯

Le travail qu'à fait cet homme est colossal et admirable. Pour chaque chose il a compilé toutes les interviews de chaque personne pour en tirer une conclusion. On apprend presque tout sur Bruce Lee que ce soit les bons comme les mauvais côtés.On a même enfin une description très précise de ce qu'il s'est passé ce fameux jour du combat entre Bruce Lee et Wong Jack Man. Je n'aurais jamais imaginé savoir un jour ce qu'il s'est réellement passé.Seul tout petit regret c'est qu'il n'y a pas vraiment de détails sur des éventuels combats avec les champions de l'époque comme Mike Stone, Joe Lewis ou Chuck Norris.Incroyable travail de ce Monsieur !

I totally enjoyed reading this comprehensive and fascinating biography on the life of Bruce Lee. All the details of Bruce Lee's early, troubled childhood in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong and his winning of the Hong Kong Cha-Cha championship in 1958 are two of the amusing points I learned from the book. Bruce Lee shortly left Hong Kong because he was constantly getting into trouble with the law and street gangs, so his family sent him back to his country of birth (he was born in San Francisco), the United States, to start a new life. He faced much anger from the Chinese community for teaching non-whites the martial arts, who felt that tradition dictated that combat skills should only be taught to Asians since white people (the "gweil-lo" which translates to white ghosts or Causcasians) could use their newly acquired skills against the Chinese. Bruce Lee always said that although he respected tradition, he was not a slave to it. Mr. Lee faced immense racial discrimination not only when trying to enter the American tv and film industry in the 1960s and early 1970s, but also from his girlfriend's family, who could not stomach her eventually marrying someone other than a Caucasian. After a brief one year stint as Kato in the tv series "The Green Hornet", Bruce Lee struggled to make ends meet, while trying to keep his martial arts school open. I learned from the book that Bruce Lee was a martial arts advisor in the Matt Helm film "The Wrecking Crew" which starred Dean Martin as a James Bond-like secret agent. After losing the lead role to David Carradine in the "Kung Fu" tv series, he left the United States and reached incredible success and fame starring in a series of Hong Kong action films for Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest studios. Sadly, Bruce Lee died a few weeks before his magnum opus "Enter the Dragon" was released to theatres around the world.I bought both the original hardcover edition and the subsequent paperback edition. My only criticism is both made the glaring factual error of referring to the Mayor of Los Angeles as Tom Brady (should have been corrected to Tom Bradley). Also, the hardcover edition omits the listing of Bruce's Longstreet episodes in the filmography section. Fortunately, the paperback edition, which came out several months later, has included the Longstreet episodes in the filmography section.All in all, this is a fabulous read on one of the most popular film stars (Bruce hated to be referred to as a star indicating the term was an illusion) of action films. I highly recommend the book to all who might want to learn more about this great individual.