A mixed bag of 20 essays and lectures (most reprinted from The New Statesman and other journals) by Africa-expert Davidson (The Black Man's Burden, 1992, etc.), selected by the author in commemoration of his 80th birthday. The best essays here were chosen by Davidson because, he says, they offer ``a line of thought that can illuminate one of the truly liberating achievements, cultural achievements, of the twentieth century: the reinstallation of Africa's peoples within the cultures of the world.'' In ``The Search for Africa's Past,'' for instance, the author discusses not only the seminal role that the West African gold trade played in creating the prosperity of ``late- medieval Europe,'' but also the many kingdoms that existed throughout Africa in precolonial times—kingdoms that Davidson thinks would have evolved into strong nation-states if the Europeans had allowed them to do so. Elsewhere, in ``Africa and the Invention of Racism,'' Davidson points out how, in the late 17th century, attitudes toward Africa changed for the worse: Before then, he explains, Europeans ``believed that they had found forms of civilization which were often comparable with their own, however variously dressed or mannered.'' But other essays included here- -especially those on South Africa, Angola, and the African peasantry—seem not only dated but often wrong. In particular, ``Southern Africa: Progress or Disaster?,'' written shortly before Nelson Mandela was released, suggests outcomes for South Africa far removed from what actually took place. Moreover, the laying of blame by Davidson (a committed socialist) on capitalism for all of Africa's ills is less than persuasive, especially in ``Nationalism and Africa's Self-Transformation,'' which faults the African nationalists who ``hoped to build independent capitalist systems based on deepening class stratification and bourgeois hegemony,'' as well as the colonialists who, he says, wished to establish a ``subcapitalist dependency.'' Davidson has his biases, and they show—but so, too, do his great affection and goodwill for a continent too often maligned or ignored.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8129-2278-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993
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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