Synopses & Reviews
In this companion volume to his critically acclaimed first book, The Tao of Muhammad Ali, Davis Miller turns his attention to a second iconic figure of the twentieth century--and another of Miller's own seminal influences: film star and martial arts legend Bruce Lee.
Just weeks after completing Enter the Dragon, his first vehicle for a worldwide audience, Bruce Lee--the self-proclaimed world's fittest man--died mysteriously at the age of thirty-two. The film has since grossed over $500 million, making it one of the most profitable in the history of cinema, and Lee has acquired almost mythic status.
Lee was a flawed, complex, yet singular talent. He revolutionized the martial arts and forever changed action moviemaking. But what has his legacy truly meant to the fans he left behind? To author Davis Miller, Lee was a profound mentor and a transformative inspiration. As a troubled young man in rural North Carolina, Miller was on a road to nowhere when he first saw Enter the Dragon, an encounter that would lead him on a physical, emotional, and spiritual journey and would change his life.
As in The Tao of Muhammad Ali, Miller brilliantly combines biography--the fullest, most unflinching and revelatory to date--with his own coming-of-age story. The result is a unique and compelling book.
Synopsis
As he did in the acclaimed The Tao of Muhammad Ali, Davis Miller once again infuses himself and his own story into the narrative of his subject's life in a thoroughly fascinating way. Through this lens we get not only the facts of Bruce Lee's life but a better understanding of his legacy and what it means to the fans he left behind.
Why did this obscure Hong Kong film star, with only two American movies to his credit, take off into the pantheon of pop cultural icons after his mysterious death at 32? In less than three years on the American movie scene, he revolutionized martial arts and action moviemaking and became an international film luminary.
Yet since his death Lee's story has been largely fictionalized and otherwise corrupted. This book dispels the Bruce Lee myth and puts us in genuine touch with a life and a death that still resonate in our culture with unlikely power.
About the Author
Davis Miller's writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. His first published story, "My Dinner with Ali," was a finalist for the 1990 National Magazine Award and in 1999 was judged by David Halberstam to be one of the fifty best pieces of sports writing of the twentieth century. His story "The Zen of Muhammad Ali" was nominated for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize and was later included in the 1994 edition of The Best American Sports Writing. Davis Miller has two children and lives near Winston-Salem, North Carolina.