A greatly revised and expanded edition of McCoy's Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972—not reviewed). Though he devotes much of his narrative to a history of modern commerce in narcotics, rather than, as the subtitle indicates, CIA complicity in the drug trade, McCoy tells a fascinating story. He shows that in the ``Golden Triangle'' of Laos, Thailand, and Burma, opium was big business and, often, the only viable form of currency. McCoy argues that, in their efforts to expand their own power in Southeast Asia, American intelligence agents permitted allies of the US (the Hmong tribe in Southeast Asia, for instance, which was vital to the CIA's secret war in Laos and which sold heroin to American GIs) to expand their lucrative drug trade. In the wake of the Vietnam War, McCoy contends, a similar relationship developed between American authorities and the contras of Central America. Drug-enforcement agencies sought the arrest of drug merchants often associated with the contras, while the CIA, viewing the contras as indispensable ideological allies in the war against Communism, did their best to thwart the vaunted ``war on drugs.'' The author produces considerable disturbing evidence that US authorities are guilty at least of complicity in the global drug trade, and argues convincingly that the drug problem at home will not end until a fundamental change is made in American policy. McCoy exposes basic hypocrisy in American policymaking, and demonstrates that, as long as powerful government bureaucracies work at cross-purposes, America's drug problem will not be easily solved.
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 1-55652-125-1
Page Count: 672
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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