Re-reading Bruce Lee Books

[Jadedragon61]

Seeing as my original copies are worn to rags, I got two new ones off the net here. It will take a few months to re-read these, but to anybody in the arts, they are classics.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

I started to read The Art of Expressing the Human Body. What do you think about the section on isometrics?  Have you done any of those exercises?  I'm curious, I like weightlifting and have used them for years, over the years isometrics has generally been discounted compared to weightlifting, but I'm always curious on those who are worked with it and found it useful.

[DragonClaws]

On 08/01/2016 at 7:11 PM, masterofoneinchpunch said:

I started to read The Art of Expressing the Human Body. What do you think about the section on isometrics?  Have you done any of those exercises?  I'm curious, I like weightlifting and have used them for years, over the years isometrics has generally been discounted compared to weightlifting, but I'm always curious on those who are worked with it and found it useful.

 

Its a good book for seeing what Bruce Lee was doing in terms of workouts, but a lot of the content is very dated now. That's not to say you cant learn anything useful from the book. Charles Atlas helped promote Isometrics in the 1920's claiming his body was built using those methods. It later turned out he had been using free weights all along. My old man has been weightlifting since the mid 60s and has an extensive library of books and magazines on this subject. He pointed out the isometrics thing to me when I bought the book in my early teens.

Edited January 12, 2016 by DragonClaws

[Phantom Dreamer]

A few books in the collection.

[Phantom Dreamer]

Another one. 

[Phantom Dreamer]

Another one from the collection. Read excerpts for years, bought at a used books store years later.

[Phantom Dreamer]

Anybody familiar with this book?

[ThunderScore]

 Picked up the Wing Chun book at a flea market...                                               Love those 1970s newsprint magazines...

[Phantom Dreamer]

The Art of Expressing the Human Body

[Phantom Dreamer]

Looking at this thread hurts, as I have lost possession of most of my material things. Yep, it stings. A good portion of my childhood turned adulthood is gone.

[Fist of the Heavenly Sky]

1 hour ago, Phantom Dreamer said:

Looking at this thread hurts, as I have lost possession of most of my material things. Yep, it stings. A good portion of my childhood turned adulthood is gone.

I take it you were affected by the recent Hurricanes? Either way, my condolences. I'm not particularly good at consolations, but at least you had the opportunity to experience the books, and the memories will always remain with you for the rest of your life.

[Phantom Dreamer]

8 hours ago, Fist of the Heavenly Sky said:

I take it you were affected by the recent Hurricanes? Either way, my condolences. I'm not particularly good at consolations, but at least you had the opportunity to experience the books, and the memories will always remain with you for the rest of your life.

Nah, not hurricanes, but the house was, let's call it robbed, some of the stuff can be replaced, since Bruce Lee stuff shows up on eBay, etc. all the time, but heirlooms and other stuff is gone forever.

[Shaolivevil]

5 hours ago, Phantom Dreamer said:

Nah, not hurricanes, but the house was, let's call it robbed, some of the stuff can be replaced, since Bruce Lee stuff shows up on eBay, etc. all the time, but heirlooms and other stuff is gone forever.

Damn...I'm sorry to hear that this has happened to you, Phantom Dreamer. I feel your pain and can sympathize. I remember my house getting robbed twice as a little kid and then getting my apartment robbed as an adult and to this day, I am still haunted by all of it. It's one thing when they take things that can replaced, but when they take things that are special to you that can never be replaced, that pain is hard to escape...

[Phantom Dreamer]

Bruce Lee books by Paul Bowman

[Phantom Dreamer]

BRUCE LEE - The Dragon Remembered; A Photographic Retrospective by Linda Palmer The official release date of this book was November 27, 2010 in honor of Bruce Lee's 70th Anniversary of his birthday.  "When Linda Palmer met Bruce Lee in late 1968, early 1969, she was married to Ted Ashley, the head of Warner Brothers. Linda and Ted's close friend, writer and producer Stirling Silliphant, brought Bruce Lee to a dinner party at their house." "Ted really liked Bruce, but he had so much to do at the studio that he didn't have time for friendships outside of his work. But, Bruce and Linda became friends and soon after that she became good friends with Bruce's wife Linda and had the pleasure of meeting their children Brandon and Shannon, spending a lot of time with them." "Throughout their friendship, Linda would embark on what now are considered historical photo shoots that at the time helped Bruce promote himself in the martial arts world and in the world of show business. But as Linda will admit, her favorite photo sessions were the ones that showed the love of the family unit." "Whether at her home or Bruce's, Linda would take out her camera and begin to shoot. At that time, no one knew these photographs would record a point in history that showed who Bruce Lee was; not only a martial arts master, or the famous actor to be, but most importantly, it showed the strength, vulnerability, humility of a self made man. Bruce did not trust everyone, especially where he and his family were concerned, but he trusted Linda completely." "Linda has decided to share with the old and new Bruce Lee fans the pictures she took of her close friend. For Linda Palmer, this is her way of thanking the friends, family and fans, that have kept Bruce Lee's flame alive all these years... This is her tribute to Lee Siu Loong..."

[DragonClaws]

18 hours ago, Phantom Dreamer said:

BRUCE LEE - The Dragon Remembered; A Photographic Retrospective by Linda Palmer The official release date of this book was November 27, 2010 in honor of Bruce Lee's 70th Anniversary of his birthday.

Never knew about this book, but I've not kept track of the all the latest books/magazine's that have come over the past eight or so years. What little I know about Linda Palmer, has come from the articles of LJF, over at the Bruce Lee Lives forum.

[Phantom Dreamer]

Remembering what once was

[mpm74]

=)

[One Armed Boxer]

6 hours ago, mpm74 said:

=)

Don't do it @mpm74!

[Phantom Dreamer]

"Boys Who Rocked the World"

[Phantom Dreamer]

Valentine's Day remembrance

[Phantom Dreamer]

Fred Weintraub book

[Phantom Dreamer]

Charles Russo Bruce Lee book. Russo is the writer who confirmed that Bruce Lee's maternal grandmother was a British woman making his mother Grace Lee half English and Bruce Lee and his biological siblings, Agnes, Peter and Robert 1/4 or a quarter British. 

[Phantom Dreamer]

University of Colorado professor writing new Bruce Lee book:

In Bruce Lee, CU's Daryl Maeda sees a symbol of the modern world — and the subject of his next book. 

 

Somehow it had escaped Maeda’s notice: The Museum of Modern Art in New York was hosting a retrospective of Bruce Lee’s films.

This was in January.

As luck would have it, a New York Timesreporter reached out to ask the CU professor about Lee, tipping him off to the show.

“I cleared my schedule and jumped on a plane,” said Maeda, who teaches a course called “Bruce Lee and the Trans-Pacific” and is at work on a book about the martial arts star.

Lee died in 1973 at age 32. He’d made just a handful of major films, of which three reached U.S. theaters during his lifetime.

But, as with James Dean, Janice Joplin and Jim Morrison, early death seems only to have amplified Lee’s fame. Mazda made him a central figure in a Super Bowl ad as recently as 2014.

Maeda thinks Lee, already the subject of several documentaries and biographies, is overdue for a deeper analysis than he’s received.

“Studying Bruce Lee is actually a way of exploring how we come to occupy a globalized world,” he said.

Born in San Francisco in 1940 while his Chinese father was singing opera there, Lee grew up in Hong Kong, where he trained in martial arts and dance and appeared in about 20 minor film roles.

Later he studied philosophy and drama at the University of Washington and opened a martial arts school in Seattle. In the mid-1960s he made his way to Hollywood and found work in television, on The Green Hornet.

Between 1971 and his death, he starred in four films that quickly made him a celebrity in Asia. The most famous of these in the U.S., Enter the Dragon, reached theaters about a month after his death, in Hong Kong, following a bad reaction to medicine.

Maeda, an ethnic studies professor, said he’ll focus on Lee as an early, extraordinary example of a person who forged a new type of truly cross-cultural identity at a time of accelerating global movements of people, information and ideas.

The defining synthesis of Lee’s cross-cultural existence was the hybrid form of martial arts fighting on display in his films. He mixed elements of karate, taekwondo and escrima (or kali) and incorporated aspects of Western boxing, fencing and dance also.

Typically cast as an avenger — physically small, but tough, brave, skilled and finely chiseled — Lee basically invented the Asian American tough guy, conquering generations of unflattering stereotypes about Asian men and becoming a symbol of pride for Asians and other racial minorities.

His films, which appeared in the twilight between the civil rights and black power movements, were hugely popular among American blacks, according to Maeda, who aims to publish his book within two years.

“Bruce Lee is a kind of a multifarious figure who can mean different things to different audiences,” he said. “He contains a multitude within himself, and as a result of that people are able to identify with various parts of his image and his being.”

And yet Lee was one of a kind — making him an appealing subject for an ambitious book.

Said Maeda: “There’s no Bruce Lee before Bruce Lee.”

[Phantom Dreamer]

Another one? A Bruce Lee authorized biography, Bruce Lee: The Authorized Visual History