Heartfelt, yet so threadbare of fresh material that it hardly merits even article-length treatment. (Photographs, 60-minute...
Radio newsman Kane may have been the only journalist to travel with the Beatles on all the stops of their 1964–65 tour, but this recounting offers little more than a chronology of screams and adulation.
Kane was 21 and a Florida radio reporter when he got the break to join the first Beatles tour of America, which he understands to have been “the greatest tour in rock-and-roll history . . . an event of great musical and social magnitude.” He writes that he approached the task with a degree of cynicism, as well as with anxiety and frustration, but he soon stands agog at the arena crowds—“rows and rows of hyperactivity”—and at the desperate acts fans would commit to get near the Fab Four: crawling through hotel air ducts, charging police officers, hoping one of the jellybeans they hurled at the musicians would hit home and thus achieve a form of contact. At times, Kane tries to put the Beatles within some sociological context—“a simmering youthful unrest and defiance against the establishment”—but mostly recounted here are the performers’ daring and absurd escapes from the concert hall, the sexual liaisons after the shows (“Getting women into the hotels required somebody with the power to do so. The Beatles couldn’t just wait around in the lobby for someone to show up!”), and Kane’s amazement that these were just four regular guys: “Their casual everyman’s view of life, coupled with their soulful music, endeared them to a whole generation.” What could have made all this hum—Kane’s unhindered access for interviews—instead provides much of its most inane material. “Kane: Hi, Ringo, how are you? Ringo: All right, Larry. How are you? Kane: Pretty good. A lot of magazines and portraits of you depict you as being very sad. You’re not a sad person, are you?”
Heartfelt, yet so threadbare of fresh material that it hardly merits even article-length treatment. (Photographs, 60-minute CD of interviews)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7624-1592-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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