Carolla’s sharp-edged and occasionally curmudgeonly observations will be an acquired taste for many, but initiated fans will...
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 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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