Outspoken comedian, podcaster and TV host Carolla (Not Taco Bell Material, 2012) presents a mock presidential bid to “make this country better.”
Hypothesizing a run for the Oval Office as an anti–big-government candidate with a “common-man touch,” Carolla offers a satirical, potty-mouthed blueprint on how contemporary America—a country he feels is being destroyed by overcaffeinated “pervasive narcissism”—could run more efficiently. Categorized by departments of the federal government, his pragmatically imagined “Carolla administration” would naturally solve a cavalcade of vexing predicaments by axing the bumbling office of vice president, repairing the economy by defusing overregulation—he uses the limited distribution of his own “Mangria” wine product as an example—and courtesy-policing lawless air travel (“we’re getting fatter by the day…and ruder. This is a terrible combination, especially in a flying tin can”). With equal ire, the author gets fired up over vanity plates, NASA, and the mannerless, inappropriate morons hijacking the general population. A spoofed address to the United Nations General Assembly attacks a ministry of global leaders on their crappy performance records (“get your shit together”). But Carolla is an equal opportunity offender who throws the gauntlet down where he sees fit, regardless of affronting the audience. His rants and solutions may be cutthroat and often sophomoric, but they’re also relatable and sure to echo the sentiments of many Americans—hence, his popularity as a social commentator. A modern-day Andy Rooney, Carolla, informed by pre-fame years working at McDonald’s and odd construction jobs, skewers the American way of life while pitching bitchy asides at every turn.
Carolla’s sharp-edged and occasionally curmudgeonly observations will be an acquired taste for many, but initiated fans will endorse his amusing candidacy.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-232040-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY
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BOOK REVIEW
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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