Veteran journalist and traveler Reeves (President Kennedy: Profile of Power, 1993, etc.) in lite mode, as he cobbles together family impressions of their 34-day, jet-propelled, round-the-world jaunt. Reeves, his wife, Catherine, and (for most of the trip) three of their children, ages 10 to 29, took off in mid-1995 for a quick spin around the globe. The kids were asked by Catherine to spend a few minutes each day jotting down their impressions. Reeves gathered together all these notes and, plaiting them with his own whimsical material and the more severe musings of Catherine, produced this pastiche of travelogue, memoir, and off-the-cuff personal journalism. They headed west, to Tokyo, then China, Indonesia, the Subcontinent, the Persian Gulf, the Levant, and lastly to Europe via North Africa. They hit the usual tourist spots, spent much time critiquing their lodgings, kept up an awesome pace. While both Catherine and the children occasionally write some pretty bright stuff, it is Reeves's personality that shines from these pages: He is an expert at the thumbnail sketch of places and politics (for years a political correspondent, he had covered many of the lands they were to visit) and at concise histories (Pakistan is particularly good here). But it's clear that he likes people most—"In the end you can gauge countries and the whole world on whether or not you like the people you meet." While most of those they seem to have encountered were either prime ministers or ambassadors or press attachés or assorted bureau chiefs, that doesn't faze Reeves, nor, thankfully, does it go to his head. Though it's all too quick for any depth, there are savory nuggets everywhere, and the little absurdities and disjunctions of travel take on vigor and wit in Reeves's hands.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8362-2175-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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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