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ELIZABETH I

Flattered, feared, idealized during her lifetime, romanticized ever since, the intensely private Elizabeth I left few accurate portraits for future painters or biographers. Somerset (Ladies in Waiting, 1984) wisely focuses on the queen's complex political life, documenting, largely from primary sources, the religious conflicts, wars, explorations, conspiracies, and rough justice that marked her reign of 45 years. The second daughter of Henry VIII (her mother, the second of six wives, was executed for adultery), Elizabeth came to the throne after the displacement of all her stepmothers and the death of her brother Edward and her sister ``Bloody'' Mary. Although she was excommunicated, she believed she was ``God's choice''—and with that confidence created a national church, revised coinage, sponsored exploration (Drake's circumnavigation of the globe), waged war against Spain, nearly subjugated the ``ungovernable'' Ireland, and strengthened the power of the throne. Pleasure-loving Elizabeth enjoyed dancing, bear-baiting, hunting, clothes (which became more bizarre as she aged), gardens, and ``progresses,'' leading the court on visits to noble houses—partly because the hygiene of her courtiers was so poor that an ``intolerable stench'' soon forced them to move on. She loved gifts, adulation, and the attention of young men, although she married none of them, using their admiration and pursuit as a source of power. Somerset claims that remaining a virgin was part of the queen's ``high calling.'' Meanwhile, her indecisiveness, irascible temper, and legitimate fear of being assassinated led to her imprisoning her cousin Mary for 19 years before, reluctantly, having her executed—although at other times she was capable of impulsive brutality, e.g., publicly cutting off the hand of a printer for criticizing one of her choices of a mate. Despite a few clichÇs (the ``air'' was ``thick with intrigue'') and an unnecessary defensiveness about Elizabeth's virginity: a clear, moving, informed narrative. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 1991

ISBN: 0-394-54435-8

Page Count: 652

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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I AM OZZY

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

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