Dry-as-dust take on a carnival-like industry.
Industry pro Rudel (Imagining Don Giovanni, 2001, etc.) chronicles radio’s early decades, when mavericks reigned and regulation was but a twinkle in Herbert Hoover’s eye.
Seen at the dawn of the 20th century as little more than a gizmo of scant interest to anyone but hobbyists, radio as a business had to be built from the ground up, often by people who didn't necessarily know what they were doing. Parallels with the pioneering days of personal computing are evident in Rudel’s narrative, which ambles in no particular hurry through a cavalcade of early innovators. Amid this huckster-heavy lot could be found the occasional true believer like Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad, who received a commercial radio license in 1920. (Restricted to military use during World War I, transmitting facilities were returned to private ownership in 1919.) Conrad began playing records over the air in response to listeners’ letters, creating the first request show. Radio also boasted impresarios such as Rudy Vallée, who is remembered now for his lackluster film career but during the 1930s was a trailblazing radio orchestra conductor. Among the hucksters were a cornucopia of unsavory types, including holy-rolling scam artist Aimee Semple McPherson and the anti-Semitic Father Coughlin, who both commanded vast audiences. The most vividly rendered scoundrel is John Brinkley, the quack doctor who used his hugely successful Kansas radio station to promote a questionable surgery that supposedly increased potency by implanting goat testicles in men. Later sections on presidential addresses and broadcasts of sporting events become progressively less interesting, since those uses of radio are much the same today. The various anecdotes and character sketches are agreeable enough, but Rudel never adequately conveys radio’s momentous impact on society.
Dry-as-dust take on a carnival-like industry.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-15-101275-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
