BOOK REVIEW
Bruce Lee Died Young, but He Changed the Look of Movies Forever. An exuberant new biography by Jeff Chang charts the action star’s life and legacy as a breakout Asian American celebrity who paved the way for others.
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“That I should be an American-born Chinese was accidental,” Bruce Lee once mused, “or it might have been by my father’s arrangement.”
Lee, cinema’s greatest martial artist and the most famous Asian American of all time, was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Nov. 27, 1940, in the segregated Chinese Hospital. His parents, Li (also anglicized as “Lee” in the U.S.) Hoi Chuen and Grace Ho, had come from Hong Kong a year earlier, sailing across the Pacific to perform Cantonese opera for Chinese American audiences across the United States.
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In spring 2024, Berkeley author and activist Jeff Chang had just completed the first draft of his Bruce Lee biography, “Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America,” when he called in the “firing squad.”
Borrowing a tactic from San Jose-raised author Viet Thanh Nguyen, Chang assembled a group of trusted peers — Bruce Lee “Be Water” documentary filmmaker Bao Nguyen, authors Adam Mansbach (“Go the F— to Sleep”) and Cathy Park Hong (“Minor Feelings”), and East Bay comedian and self-proclaimed “No. 1 Bruce Lee Expert (Non-Asian Division)” W. Kamau Bell.
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Advanced Praise for Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff Chang:
Washington Post’s Fall Publishing Preview
New York Times 25 Books Coming in September
Inside Hook The 10 Books You Should Be Reading This September
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Created by Rebecca Cutter, The Hunting Wives’ first season was based on the bestselling novel by May Cobb. Season 2 will be an original concept-based continuation of the story, using the Season 1 finale as a jumping-off point. At the start of Season 2, Sophie (Snow) and Margo (Åkerman) are on the outs. But soon enough, old secrets and new foes force them back together. As they play their dangerous games the question arises. Are they the hunters or the hunted?
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It’s been 20 years since Jeff Chang’s masterful Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, but he’s back in a big way with Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Sept. 23). Chang rejects the legend and opts for a dense portrait using rarely-seen archives, of a man whose immigration reflected the rise of Asian American communities.
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Lindsey Stewart, author of the critically acclaimed The Conjuring of America, has written an enlightening article for TIME titled “The Powerful Meaning of Black Mermaids in American History.” “For centuries, Black enslaved communities invoked mermaids as they organized rebellions against slavery,” she says in her detailed analysis.
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This Here is Love – Princess Perry
"Perry’s intersecting plots are gripping, but what’s more impressive is the way she guides us through her characters’ emotional depths."
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Karin Slaughter’s new book opens on a hot summer night in Georgia. It’s Madison Dalrymple’s 15th birthday and she has a big night planned with her best friend. But both girls go missing and there’s no easy answer to what happened to them. We Are All Guilty Here is the crime writer’s 25th book in 25 years of writing. In today’s episode, Slaughter joins NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly for a conversation that touches on the dynamics of small Southern towns and the impact of the 1979-1981 Atlanta child murders.
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The streaming service has measured some massive increases in audiobook engagement in the two weeks following the releases of The Hunting Wives, We Were Liars and more, the company tells us.
Leading the trend is May Cobb’s The Hunting Wives, which saw a 605% increase in global listening in the two weeks following its arrival on Netflix July 21, 2025. The 8-episode first season of the show stars Malin Akerman as Margo Banks, Brittany Snow as Sophie O’Neil and more.
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Karin Slaughter talks about her 25th book — "We are All Guilty Here" - with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. It's a small town murder mystery — that twists and turns until the end.
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In Karin Slaughter's new novel We Are All Guilty Here, due out this month, Officer Emmy Clifton has to figure out who kidnapped two young girls, one of whom happens to be her best friend's stepdaughter. It is a hefty story that spans many years and unearths many secrets. The first in a new North Falls series of books, We Are All Guilty Here may just be Slaughter's most sprawling novel yet — and that's saying something, given that this is her 25th novel in 25 years.
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My first book, Blindsighted, published on September 4, 2001. One week later, the Twin Towers fell. It’s hard to reconcile that this was almost 25 years ago and that I’ve written 24 more books in that time. The days were long but the years were short, as the saying goes. Since then, quite a lot has changed in the world and in the world of book publishing.
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The drama has all the ingredients of a binge-watch: culture wars, murder and sex.
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For those who prefer edge-of-your-seat thrillers, like Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series, don’t miss her latest page-turner, We Are All Guilty Here. Slaughter’s new book follows an officer investigating the mysterious disappearance of two teens in a small town.
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As Karin Slaughter talks about her new thriller book series, We Are All Guilty Here, she’s equally wry, reflective and ready to take off on a whole new level.
Her success is formidable: 24 novels have sold more than 40 million copies and been translated into 120 languages. They include the Grant County series featuring Sara Linton, a small-town pediatrician and medical examiner, which was followed by another centering on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Will Trent. The Will Trent series is the basis for the hit ABC TV series starring Ramón Rodriguez that was recently renewed for Season 4.
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If it feels like everyone and their mother is watching The Hunting Wives, it’s because they are. Literally. My mom just texted me that she’s watching the show. (I knew those gals in her canasta group were a bad influence on her.)
The Netflix series, which is based on the May Cobb book of the same name, makes those other “wives” shows (Desperate Housewives, Real Housewives, Mormon Wives) look like Bluey.
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The Hunting Wives was the most-streamed series in the U.S. last week, racking up more than 2B minutes viewed on Netflix, per a new report from Luminate.
This is a pretty big win for Lionsgate Television, which produced the series that up until around two months ago was set for release on Starz. As of now, The Hunting Wives is only licensed to Netflix for U.S. distribution — not that that seems to have impacted its performance very much. In fact, the title is doing particularly well for a U.S.-only streaming series, more than doubling its viewership from the week prior, when it managed 811M minutes viewed in its debut week on Netflix, according to Luminate.
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