Polly's book is far more than the mere filling-in of a lacuna; this is an intensely engrossing biography ... Polly runs a bright, fast-paced, almost chatty prose line throughout the book, filling his accounts with action and dialogue of a novelistic type ... Underneath its flashy readability (a readability aided by the fact that Lee's personal life often showed distinct similarities to his movies – he's always ready to fight, physically, with co-stars, directors, purported rivals), Bruce Lee: A Life is grounded on a staggering amount of research ... Every aspect of Lee's personal and professional life is laid out in such exacting detail that it scarcely seems possible the book could ever be supplanted as the definitive life. Readers who've been waiting for such a life – and readers who didn't know they were – will find Polly's book irresistible.
Matthew Polly’s Bruce Lee: A Life represents the first deep dive into the childhood, career, and legacy of the actor, and it’s difficult to imagine a future biographer putting together a more definitive or entertaining take on the subject. When he wasn’t acting, young Bruce Lee was a troublemaker and prankster. Stories like one in which he and a friend sought revenge on a theater owner — the climax of which involved an explosion and a bucket of feces — are alternately amusing and horrifying … That Lee accomplished so much in such a brief life and…reading Matthew Polly’s Bruce Lee, one finds a life far richer and more fascinating than his movies could convey.
Matthew Polly’s muscular biography of Lee could feel like a tragedy ... Yet despite his death, this book succeeds in capturing his energy and achievements, a volley of incident that rarely lets up ... Polly is, however, as keen to unpick myths as make them and he dedicates a chapter to the day Lee died ... This isn’t a subtle book, but for anyone curious about Lee’s legacy, it’s a roundhouse kick of a biography.
It’s difficult to imagine a more comprehensive account of Bruce Lee’s short but influential life than this one ... but the book isn’t an investigation into the kung fu star’s death; rather, it’s a celebration of his life ... Polly charts the course of Lee’s life in careful, precise detail ... His admiration for Lee comes through on nearly every page ... the author doesn’t skim lightly over Lee’s drug use or infidelity, nor does he shy away from the sordid circumstances surrounding Lee’s death ... A fascinating story of a remarkable figure in popular culture, this is the biography Bruce Lee’s legion of fans have been waiting for.
Matthew Polly's Bruce Lee: A Life is the definitive and authoritative biography fans of the Little Dragon have been waiting to read. This mammoth, 650-page book about the martial arts film superstar who died at age 32 is packed with new information and, like its subject, moves with lightning speed and grace ... Polly's meticulously researched and superbly written biography is a delight. (Even his 100 pages of footnotes are pithy and revelatory.) Bruce Lee: A Life is a spectacularly entertaining and candid biography that separates the myth and the man.
This thorough, well-sourced biography from Polly (Tapped Out) is an engrossing examination of the life of a martial arts movie star and his shocking, early death ... In what is certainly the definitive biography of Lee, Polly wonderfully profiles the man who constructed a new, masculine Asian archetype and ushered kung fu into pop culture.
Matthew Polly’s Bruce Lee: A Life represents the first deep dive into the childhood, career, and legacy of the actor, and it’s difficult to imagine a future biographer putting together a more definitive or entertaining take on the subject. When he wasn’t acting, young Bruce Lee was a troublemaker and prankster. Stories like one in which he and a friend sought revenge on a theater owner — the climax of which involved an explosion and a bucket of feces — are alternately amusing and horrifying … Lee accomplished so much in such a brief life and…reading Matthew Polly’s Bruce Lee, one finds a life far richer and more fascinating than his movies could convey.
