Bruce Lee: A Life

I’m not a huge Bruce Lee fan, never had the iconic poster on my wall, but I always enjoy watching him on screen. Like his good friend Steve McQueen he just commanded every frame he was in, whether stood quietly in the background, or in a blur of hyper-energetic action, you can’t take your eyes off him.

Before reading this I only knew the basics of his story, culled from a few magazine articles and a dubious biopic.

This exhaustive detailed telling of his life provides a fascinating insight into his short 32 years, and his on-going legacy.

From forgotten child-actor, to restaurant busboy, failed student, to gym owner, personal trainer to the stars, and his eventual emergence as a global superstar, it tells the story of a driven show more conflicted man searching for inner peace.

It doesn’t pull any punches when discussing Lee’s flaws, but also highlights his loyalty and caring for those he felt were unfairly treated.

One aspect that I’d never thought about was Lee’s approach to race. As an American born Chinese he was never fully accepted by either culture and took it on himself to embrace and teach his techniques and philosophy to whoever wanted to learn irrespective of their background. He was a true multi-cultural man who focused on people not rules. show less

Polly does a good job of sifting rumour from reality, the man from the myth. He still presents an amazing story of an extremely driven—and wildly competitive—man.

It's a compelling story, and Polly doesn't shy away from Lee's rougher sides, especially his drug use and philandering.

Great book.

Well researched book with plenty of interviews with family and those who knew and worked with Bruce Lee. The author's theory that Lee died of heatstroke instead of a reaction the aspirin/equagesic makes a whole lot of sense, especially with Lee's wife saying he had taken aspirin in the past with no ill effects. This book was hard to put down and in addition to the text contains the Lee Family Tree, filmography, and extensive notes section.

The only thing good about this book was the pictures. The book's back sleeve says that Polly spent two years studying at the Shaolin Temple Henan, China. It also says he is a Princeton Grad & Rhodes Scholar. Two strikes against him. Then there's almost a lie, or a lie based on innuendo, on every page. Strike three. In other words, skip this shoddy work except to skip through. Bob Wall dismissed Polly for spreading lies about Lee. Polly said that Lee wanted to kill Wall over the incident involving the broken glass bottles cutting Lee's hand during Enter The Dragon. Wall obviously knew Lee well and refused to accept the absurdities Polly was peddling. In the end, this is book about making money for Polly and nothing else. The great thesis show more of Polly is that Lee died by heat stroke, not knowing anything about medicine. I guess Polly also moonlighted as a Chinese herbal Doctor too. Everybody knows you can't die by heat stroke. You die due to heart-attack from dehydration or from swelling of the brain due to lack of fluids. This book is crazy about conspiracy theories so I'm surprised anyone would take it seriously. This is a bizarre book by an Ivy League fraud. Unfortunately he has maligned Bruce Lee who achieved much and therefore deserved better from Simon & Schuster. show less

"Bruce Lee: A Life"

Seemed like a strange titled when I bought it but it's accurate. From birth to death and his legacy.

This is an amazing work by Polly. Always interesting and I never had a hint of being dragged through book-filler. I knew very little about Bruce Lee and decided it was time to fix it when I heard about this book.

The amount of research the author did for this book can be seen by the number of pages of footnotes (almost 100), bibliography (14), and index (24). I bought the paper version but anyone who wants it in order to mine it for information may want to get the ebook assuming it's properly indexed and linked.

Get this book. You won't be disappointed.

I got this book for my father for his birthday. Ever since I was a little kid he has loved Bruce Lee films and I think that Bruce is one of the reasons he is passionate about Martial Arts. We decided this would be a fun book to read together and I found it a very enjoyable and informative read. I don't think Bruce and I would have been friends (My father agrees with me), but I still found reading about his life interesting. The main reason I bumped this down to four stars was because of how repetitive the book was. There was a lot that was stated twice within the same page and it became rather tiresome. Other than that, I thought it was a good read and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Bruce's life.