Joe Hyams (1923–2008)

This is a good picture of Bogart's rise and his life with Bacall by a journalist who knew the both fairly well. The book is in three parts: an interleaved story of both principals' youth and rise, their marriage and collaboration, Bacall's life after Bogie. It was most interesting to me how Bogie's success was despite his own anti-social behavior throwing away opportunity and chances while living his adult life as a functional alcoholic.

I enjoyed this book, it has some zen wisdom sprinkled in and multiple interesting anecdotes by the author. The latter is the meat of the book and they are deli-sliced. The real entertainment in this book is going along for the ride with someone who is sincere about their experiences however mystical, how it made them feel, what they learned, and how certain other personalities had influenced their lives. However, there are a few pages of Ki hooey, fortunately, that is isolated to a few pages show more and a sentence elsewhere.
I picked this book up for under a dollar in a thrift store, so I definitely got my money's worth it was also an easy, very, very short read. I devoured this thing in less than an hour. All said I would recommend this book if you can snag it for anywhere under a couple of bucks. show less

My friend Dan told me this was the book that changed his life, or something to that effect. So I bought it. It was an easy read, short, concise, to the point and full of deep nuggets of wisdom pertaining to the practice of the martial arts and to life itself. Joe Hyam practiced the martial arts under a number of renown Sifu, the most famous of which was Bruce Lee.

This connection brought back memories of the time in my own past where I was obsessed with the Little Dragon. Even though it has show more been a few years since I have delved into his writings, much of it came back to life in my mind.

Of course Joe Hyam had more to say that just a sequence of Bruce Lee vignettes.

Foremost amongst them are the ideas of being in the flow and practicing the art with great concentration and vigor but also with singular attention of not trying. He also speaks of the kind of decision making that Daniel Kahnemann explores in his Thinking: Fast and Slow and Michael Lewis' The Undoing Project. I am now thinking on these themes and trying to piece all of the ideas together. For this I felt the book was a great find for me personally.

I was pleasantly surprised by his mention of the concept of flow and trying not to try, these are things that I had just read about in the past few years, yet in his crude but very concise way, Hyam was able to explain these concepts in a tiny book. I was actually quite impressed.

The elegant part of the book is that Hyam was able to put what he had to say in short 2-3 page chapters, he does so with great clarity and follows them up with pertinent quotes. This is a great book to keep with me as a reminder of the lessons.

I was also disheartened to read that Joe Hyam had passed away in 2008, this was an older book. show less

Bogie does more than report events. It relives a life. The brawls, the sprees, the razor-edged wisecracks: Hyams describes them all. He recapture the deep friendships--with Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Katherine Hepburn.