An affecting, informative amalgam of personal and national history.
A memoir that situates personal remembrance within the tumult of the Cuban revolution.
Debut author Tischler’s father, Adolfo Sanchez, split his young adulthood between the United States and his native Cuba. After inheriting some property in Cuba that included the ruins of an old sugar mill, he moved back to the island nation around 1930, during economically bright times that Cubans commonly referred to as the “dance of the millions.” Filled with hopeful anticipation, he borrowed heavily to expand his property and convert it into a cattle ranch, and then the financial devastation of the Depression hit. However, Adolfo’s ranch, after some trying years, eventually became a steady success; the author grew up in comparative prosperity, which allowed her to receive some of her education in the United States. However, much tougher times were just around the bend, and Tischler vividly remembers hearing news on the radio that Cuban president Fulgencio Batista “had simply taken over the government.” The author later met her husband in Florida, and for a time they lived in Cuba together when he found work in the town of Nicaro. But the political environment continued to deteriorate, and her brother, Oli, tragically lost his life as a consequence. Angela’s husband lost his job because of his lack of sympathy for the Cuban revolution (the letter of termination is extraordinary), and they finally relocated to the United States. The author’s prose is philosophically charged and often wryly funny, filled with sociological aperçus: “Americans have an undying faith that their government will get them out of whatever mess they get into,” she writes. “We Cubans don’t expect anything from our government and least of all, in our present situation.” Also, she manages to convey a heartbreaking tale of personal loss and political folly without mordant sentimentality or grim fatalism. Although not every reader will be enthralled by the detailed accounts of her family genealogy, the story aspires to more general history and universal relevance. As such, she deftly braids together her autobiography and the story of the life of Cuba, and her love of her homeland, despite its decline, is endearing. Finally, she provides a welcome alternative to other accounts of the Cuban revolution by American journalists and academics.
An affecting, informative amalgam of personal and national history.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9838519-1-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: A Swan Song Book
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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