Political reporter and commentator Reeves, as American as we come, discovers the Pakistani/Muslim/Third World differences: in one of many apt nutshells—"we couldn't even get each other's names straight." Reeves was in Pakistan with his family, he relates, because his wife was studying conditions in Afghan refugee camps; he was accredited as a reporter, but he mainly conveys impressions—of a three tier, three time-period ("city, town, and rural") modernizing society—by turning his American attitudes to advantage. "Nothing worked"—or, rather, "it didn't work the way an American thought it should." The difference was between an appointment and come-on-over, "between systematic and individual approaches to handling predictable situations or problems." What can be done expeditiously—an international phone call, say—is done by modern electronic technology and according to the rules of international commerce, "a kind of new imperialism." "Within its own borders, though. . . the nation was going to have to suffer the agony of its own modernization." The book works because Reeves is a practiced observer, and he doesn't breastbeat. On the critical division between the West and Muslim fundamentalism, "the communications gap is far less complicated than gaps in basic perceptions." A number of Pakistanis speak of the Crusades; says Reeves' teenage son, looking at a group of soldiers, "If I were a Russian soldier, I'd be afraid of those guys." (Adds Reeves, "Me, too.") Reeves does note the "silliness," sometimes, of the Islamicization of Pakistan; but he finds Islam "rich and complex enough intellectually and idealistic enough not only to provide the material for Brotherhood of Man, Fatherhood of God speeches, but to create the environment for technological modernization and for modern political systems providing the rule of law. . . social justice and economic opportunity for most of the people, most of the time." What he'd like to see the US do—in place of ineffectual economic aid, futile military aid (supportive of the elite, of the military dictatorship)—is to underwrite literacy programs: at least in Russian client-states, he observes, people learn to read. And he does see Pakistan moving toward some kind of non-Marxist socialism. As an honest statement of confusion, it's as good as anything around (certainly preferable to V. S. Naipaul's caustic Among the Believers).
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1984
ISBN: 0671508423
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1984
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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