As with all of Kaplan’s work, solid journalism combines with a gloomy sense of history to produce a worthy study.
More travels to difficult places in search of future geopolitical nightmares.
Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy, 1999, etc.) has carved a journalistic niche writing about collapse and decay; if there’s a new Rwanda or Kosovo in the making anywhere on the planet, the chances are good that Kaplan’s been there and reported on it. Here he takes on three smallish geographical areas that, taken together, add up to a big swath along the soft underbelly of Eurasia, and trouble is brewing throughout; looking deep into history, the author defines his area of concern as “a volatile region where the cultural legacies of the Byzantine, Persian, and Turkish empires overlap.” The first section of his account, which he deems a sequel to his fine 1993 study, Balkan Ghosts, examines the continuing fragmentation of southeastern Europe, not so much along ethnic lines (although ethnic struggles play their part) as along zones of influence (with Hungary, for example, drawn ever closer to Russia, and Romania hungering to free itself from Russia and become a part of the happy Western family of nations). His reportage from Sofia, Bucharest, and Budapest is literate and sharply drawn, as is his whirlwind tour of Turkey, where he sees hope for increased democratization and stability in the face of growing fundamentalist intransigence elsewhere in the region. With the death of Syria’s Hafez Assad, the subsequent analysis of the Middle East may already be dated, but the account of changing Israeli and Palestinian relations is valuable. The weakest portion is the last, which suffers from a hurried feel; Yo’av Karny’s exceptional new book, Highlanders (see below), is much better, although readers who follow international events will want to take notice of the author’s checklist of flashpoints in the Caucasus—which includes war between Iran and Azerbaijan, conflicts over a planned trans-Caspian pipeline, and other excuses for bloodshed.
As with all of Kaplan’s work, solid journalism combines with a gloomy sense of history to produce a worthy study.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50272-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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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