Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit: A Biography - Softcover

Thomas, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883319250 ISBN 13: 9781883319250

Publisher: Frog Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

This is the only independent biography of Bruce Lee, and it is complete in terms of both the martial arts and the movies.

About this title

Review:

"Bruce Lee was a star in America but an icon in much of the rest of the world. Since the U.S. is the big enchilada in pop culture, Lee worked for years to become recognized here and to spread appreciation of the martial arts in a society that had a jaundiced, even bigoted view of those ancient disciplines. Thomas makes it abundantly clear that Lee was both an astonishing athlete and an engaging actor. Devotees of his movies and two TV shows, The Green Hornet and Longstreet, know that, of course. Thomas notes that Lee, as the Green Hornet's sidekick, Kato, gave American audiences their first look at authentic martial arts. The current popularity of martial arts in the U.S. flows from Lee's own, and the martial arts movies that continue to appear in the wake of Lee's Dragon series constitute an identifiable movie subgenre. A major force in popular entertainment, Lee deserves the place in the pop culture library that Thomas ably helps him fill."
- Booklist

From the Author:

After the publication (August 2002) of the expanded edition of Fighting Spirit, my full-length biography of Bruce Lee, I had no intention of ever writing anything further on the subject. Then my sister told me of a group of her co-workers who, inspired by Geri Halliwell, had forsaken their usual visit to the pub in order to take part in a yoga class... Now, Ms Halliwell achieved her end (pun intended) by doing yoga for several hours a day - and by following a further rigorous schedule of exercise and diet. Predictably, the motivation of my sister's co-workers lasted for about two classes before the regular pub socializing took over. Except that it didn't - quite! One of the girls made a connection with her experience and is now studying Yoga in India.

In a similar way, I was first attracted, superficially, to Bruce Lee because I thought that, in his own field, he was as good as Jimi Hendrix or George Best were in theirs! Many people are drawn to him because, in his actions or in his words, they recognize something desirable or something useful- or something real. So I began writing about him, not because I was an expert, but because I wanted to learn.
Some of the material in this book is no more than trivial and amusing. All of it is, I believe, at least 'interesting', and some of it is potentially very valuable - even life changing.

About this edition

• Publisher: Frog Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1883319250
• ISBN 13: 9781883319250
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352