Harnessing Anger: The Inner Discipline of Athletic Excellence

To Peter Westbrook, harnessing anger means controlling one's fury and channeling it in a positive direction. Westbrook's success in what he once called that strange white sport is really just one expression of the self-discipline that has led him to beat the odds, again and again.

In Harnessing Anger, Westbrook tells how he came to be the first African American to win a national gold title in sabre fencing. The son of an African-American father and a Japanese mother, Peter was aised by his mother alone in poverty in a Newark ghetto. Becoming a fencer at an early age gave him the confidence and the discipline to use an ancient martial art to his advantage both in swordplay and when facing the vicissitudes of daily life in the inner city.

The autobiography of this six-time Olympian, 13-time U.S. National champion and the only book on his amazing life, Harnessing Anger tells us how Westbrook has overcome strong adversaries on and off the fencing mat.

PETER WESTBROOK is a six-time Olympian athelete. He has been featured countless times in print and electronic media, including appearances on The Today Show, CNN, TBS, and BET, and in The New York Times, People, the Village Voice, the New York Daily News, the Newark Star Ledger, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among others.

TEJ HAZARIKA is a writer and publisher of Cool Grove Press. A graduate of Columbia University, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Candace, and their five-year-old son, Sage.

About Tej Hazarika