A disturbing but insightful look at the brave new reproductive world that is dawning. Anyone assuming civilization isn’t poised at an important crossroads will think otherwise after reading this book. Andrews (Black Power, White Blood, 1996), director of the Institute for Science, Law, and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been involved in just about every legal and ethical debate surrounding the murky, evolving world of reproductive technology since the first test tube baby was born—on the day Andrews passed her bar exam, by the way—and she knows it’s complicated territory. She offers insights on cloning, in vitro fertilization, selling sperm and eggs, and selective genetics, in which parents can decide which babies to carry full-term. At one point Andrews poses as a woman interested in choosing sperm from a Nobel-winning scientist via Robert Klark Graham’s Repository for Germinal Choice. Graham believes that a putative general decline in intelligence could be stemmed if the “more able” simply had more babies. Minor glitch: Andrews is single, and Graham’s services are limited to married women. “I need your legal skills,” he tells her. “Come up with a rule where I can give sperm to you, but not have to give it to an unmarried black woman.” In the same chapter Andrews notes the lack of public health regulations stipulating how sperm must be stored. Remarks one California lawyer about Graham’s operation: “If I wanted to open a sperm bank in the deli next to the pastrami, there would be nothing to stop me.” This scary scenario only grows more plausible as Andrews demonstrates that reproductive law and funding are governed more by political expediency than rational thought. Remarkably free of techno-jargon, this fascinating premillennium primer cautions readers about the many legal and ethical potholes awaiting those who venture into such uncharted territory.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-6080-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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
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