An accomplished biography of one of the most important women of 18th- century Britain. Journalist Foreman, whose work is based on her doctoral research at Oxford, has written a lively account of the life and times of Georgiana Cavendish that is also a social history of the British aristocracy in the late 1700s. Born in 1757, Georgiana Spencer married William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, a leading Whig aristocrat who never sought nor held high public office. What the taciturn duke lacked in political drive was more than made up for by his ambitious wife. The duchess made their London home, Devonshire House, the center of Whig politics and social life for the last quarter of the 18th century. Although the mores of the time limited any woman’s political role, Georgiana wielded considerable influence with Charles James Fox, Charles Grey, and other Whig politicians of the day. She was the first woman to publicly campaign for a candidate in an election, stumping for Fox in 1784. She was the intermediary in many a brokered deal (e.g., the multiparty coalition that turned out Addington’s government in 1804). The Devonshire House circle set trends in fashion, dance, and games of chance. Georgiana was considered the most captivating society woman of her time, but her life—already complicated by the presence of Lady Elizabeth Foster, her friend and her husband’s mistress, in her household—was darkened further by her addictive gambling, her indiscreet affair with Grey, and the resulting pregnancy. Brian Masters presented a more forgiving view of the mÇnage Ö trois in his Georgiana (1981). But Foreman’s Georgiana is shown in greater detail as a remarkable and intelligent woman whose literary and scientific pursuits were encouraged by the likes of Edward Gibbon. Effortlessly written and scrupulously documented, this will be the standard biography of Georgiana for some time. (16 pages illus., not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50294-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
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 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
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