“The original Tao of Jeet Kune Do was published in 1975 and, you know, Bruce passed away in 1973,” Linda Lee Cadwell says. “And then myself and my children, we made the move from Hong Kong and we brought all his possessions with us, and all his books and papers. When we were discussing [Bruce's papers] with Black Belt magazine, I just thought that there was so much valuable material there that I didn’t want to just put it away in filing cabinets and [have it] never see the light of day.
“Bruce himself had qualms about publishing his writings because he didn’t want them to be a how-to book that people would just pick up and [read], ‘This is how you do a punch and this is how you do a kick,’ you know, and just follow it movement by movement like that.
“So he had qualms about it. And I did as well, thinking, What would he do? How would he want this published?
“So, in the end, it was decided — by myself — that this was just too much valuable material to put away. And so the original Tao of Jeet Kune Do was published the way it was — with no pictures and just Bruce’s drawings and his writings — and I think it has served a wonderful purpose for all these decades. There have been so many thousands and thousands of people who have told me how much they have gotten out of the book.
“However, now here we are in 2011 and I think it’s very well-advised to do a revision of it, an update of it, to give it a much more modern feel to the book, to explain some things that were not explained in the original book like the Chinese writings, to make the drawings clearer … just to give it a better look for a new generation of readers.
“So I’m very pleased that Black Belt has undertaken [the task] to do this revision.”
The revision has taken shape in a fully refurbished book with an updated front cover, comprehensive Chinese-character translations, a history of the book’s creation, digitally enlarged and enhanced Bruce Lee illustrations, and editorial contributions from Linda Lee Cadwell, Shannon Lee, Tim Tackett, Chris Kent, Jerry Poteet, Diana Lee Inosanto, Richard Bustillo, Yori Nakamura, Tommy Gong and others. Tao of Jeet Kune Do: Expanded Edition is the must-have martial arts book of 2011.
