Effusive, admiring bio of Alma Sullivan Reed, a San Franciscan who fashioned a unique career—as reporter, archaeologist, deep-sea diver, p.r. writer—in an unlikely age. Born in 1889, Reed bluffed her way into her first job (as ``Mrs. Goodfellow'' for the Call) and most of the ones thereafter. She led the fight to forestall the hanging of an underaged immigrant; created the San Quentin beat; and covered the Fatty Arbuckle trial before sending her conventional parents the usual promises as, in 1923, she left for Mexico for The New York Times. There, she enjoyed a passion for archaeology and met married governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Theirs was an ``amor calido,'' a ``romance of the steam,'' according to May (Witness to War, 1983)- -an intense attachment severed by Puerto's death by firing-squad several years later. Writing with an enterprising enthusiasm, May tracks Reed around the world, blending personal details with the facts and findings of her subject's work, whether unraveling the secrets of the Cumaean sibyl, rescuing the contents of Mayan tombs, or overcoming the early problems of undersea photography. May never fails to note that Reed's own life, real and embellished, was her best story, the true facts along with those she upgraded (e.g., by granting herself a doctorate). It's too bad that this rich and varied life is burdened by the use of imagined dialogue, a device common to YA biographies. A woman who hung out with Kahlil Gibran, promoted the career of muralist Jose Orozco, and broke the story of the Peabody Museum's stolen treasures could benefit from a more sophisticated approach.
Pub Date: April 26, 1993
ISBN: 1-55778-371-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
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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