Wine drinkers of America, get ready for a roasting. According to this American edition of British wine-writer Barr's exposÇ-cum-put-down, the great American wine boom of the 70's and early 80's was fueled by white wines that we drank too cold and too sweet, and specifically by pop wines, coolers, and that fad of the bourgeoisie, white zinfandel. The imported wine we honor has been mishandled in transit. At restaurants, we pay absurd prices for ignorantly mistreated bottles. We are foolishly impressed by champagne, which has little taste, especially as made today; and the glasses we drink it from are all wrong. The Univ. of California at Davis has fostered an industrial rather than agricultural approach to wine; the result is a technically perfect product that is wholly without taste. Blind tastings are misleading, partly because wine is meant to be drunk with food, not with other wines; and California wines tend to beat those from Bordeaux and Burgundy in blind tastings partly because they mature sooner. On the other hand, we're unduly impressed by French wines, which aren't necessarily better. Worse, we are currently experiencing a national temperance movement, manifest in ``ridiculous'' health warnings. But if we are foolish, riper cultures have much to answer for. French and Italian regions sell more wine than they produce; claim fake vintage dates; indulge in misleading appellations; overcrop; and employ a jumble of additives—some toxic, some misleading, some illegal, and some of compromising quality. Snob or antisnob, read on and you, too, dear hypocrite lecteur, may squirm yet.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-70804-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
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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