Striking Distance

Bruce Lee & the Dawn of Martial Arts in America

By: Charles Russo

Narrated by: Dan Woren

In the spring of 1959, 18-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth, and quickly inserted himself into the West Coast's fledgling martial arts culture. Even though Asian fighting styles were widely unknown to mainstream America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in a San Francisco Bay Area that was populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown's aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the no-nonsense Oakland street fighter. Regarded by some as a brash loudmouth and by others as a dynamic visionary, Bruce spent his first few years back in America advocating a more modern approach to the martial arts and showing little regard for the damaged egos left in his wake.

In the Chinese calendar, 1964 was the Year of the Green Dragon. It would be a challenging and eventful year for Bruce. He would broadcast his dissenting view before the first great international martial arts gathering and then defend it by facing down Chinatown's young ace kung fu practitioner in a legendary behind-closed-doors, high-noon-style showdown. The Year of the Green Dragon saw the dawn of martial arts in America and the rise of an icon.

Drawing on more than 100 original interviews and an eclectic array of sources, Striking Distance is an engrossing narrative chronicling San Francisco Bay's pioneering martial arts scene as it thrived in the early 1960s and offers an in-depth look at a widely unknown chapter of Bruce Lee's iconic life.

©2016 Charles Russo (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Fantastic insight into the environment..

Fantastic insight into the environment around Bruce Lee. You'll get an interesting view of martial thinking worldwide during and of the time building up to Lee's prominence. It showed that ideas for floating around before then, and just needed the right spearhead to push martial arts forward out of a secret society/superstition into practical arts.

Excellent History Lesson

This books provides balanced and in depth history of the beginnings of modern martial arts in America. I have been a lifelong fan of Bruce Lee and many of his contemporaries. There has long been a fractured view of Bruce and his philosophy, but this book does a great job of explaining where and how that fractured view began. I have this book in my main reference shelf for martial arts study.

Good Read

As a fan and practioner of martial arts it was a lot of review with a few new tidbits of information.

Amazing...but where is the rest?

The only reason this book didn't get 5 stars was because it ended to quickly. The story goes into great detail about Bruce in the first part of his life and the history of martial arts. However, it stops abruptly just as Lee's career and life gets started. Loved the book but wished it went further. Still worth the listen for sure.

Great history of martial arts in America

Dan Worren is incredible.
Loved learning the hidden history of Chinese martial arts in America.