Significance and relevance delivered by way of superlative prose and keen journalistic investigation.
Consistent excellence distinguishes this annual series, and while all 20 selections are brilliant in their own right, the most contemporary ones steal the show.
The collection opens with “Everybody Sucks” (New York), Vanessa Grigoriadis’s clever analysis of the “weird fascination” exerted by the media-gossip blog gawker.com, which published derisive commentary about her and her husband the day after she was married. Several investigative pieces report from overseas: Peter Hessler scrutinizes the exploding economic consumerism of newly created “factory towns” in “China’s Instant Cities” (National Geographic), and William Langewiesche vets Brazil’s dubious state of governmental protection and general safety in “City of Fear” (Vanity Fair). Shards of irony tinge the humorous essays of social critic Caitlin Flanagan, who logs onto some young-adult, profile-based websites in “Babes in the Woods” (The Atlantic), and of Christopher Hitchens, who skewers the blatant hypocrisy marinating the Larry Craig foot-tapping scandal in his brief, brilliant commentary, “So Many Men’s Rooms, So Little Time” (Slate). Striking profiles include Steve Oney’s moving portrait of Marine Corps corporal Chris Leon, a young soldier serving in the war-ravaged city of Ramadi who perished at the hands of a sniper (“Casualties of War,” Los Angeles); “Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood” (Vanity Fair), in which Evan Wright amusingly trails the eccentric man who abandoned Tinseltown in favor of a life producing documentaries; and Paige Williams’s touching portrayal of the tragic yet amazing spiritual journey of a fearless teenager (“You Have Thousands of Angels Around You,” Atlanta). Most disturbing is Thomas E. Kennedy’s harrowing “I Am Joe’s Prostate” (New Letters), a slice of real-life journalism that intimately describes the kind of invasive procedures that have been keeping men away from the doctor’s office for centuries.
Significance and relevance delivered by way of superlative prose and keen journalistic investigation.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-231-14714-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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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