Available in English for the first time, the greatest essays and speeches of the 19th-century Latin American educator, politician, and scholar, a leading figure in building a humanistic post-colonial tradition in Latin America. The pieces included here cover a range of subjects, from public education to historiography to language studies. Bello (17811865), who was born in Venezuela, spent many years abroad. While living in Europe, Bello launched several journals intended for a Latin American audience, focusing on the means of constructing the region's new nations. His goal, presented in the prospectus included here, was to aid Latin America in ``completing its process of civilization,'' a task he pursued for the next 40 years, especially after returning to Latin America. His epic poem ``Allocution to Poetry'' praises the continent's natural beauty and stimulated others to pursue a distinctly Latin American tradition in letters. His essay on Spanish grammar rejects the dependence on Latin in the pedagogy of the day and stresses the application of logic to teaching, understanding, and applying grammatical rules. Writing as the rector of the Colegio de Santiago, and later as the first rector of the University of Chile, Bello stresses the importance of public education in the construction of a working democracy, and argues that morality (``inseparable from religion'') must be a key theme in education. As a member of the Chilean Congress, Bello drafted the nation's civil code, which attempts to clarify issues surrounding property and contracts in the context of a new civil society. Bello, a reveler in archives, passionately argues that history is at its core ``the science of humanity,'' yet another way of supplying nations with vital ideas. As a teacher he provided an apt example of what academic disciplines could contribute to society. And as a writer and thinker he did a good deal to wean Latin America off its stance of intellectual servility to the Old World.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-19-510545-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
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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