Compelling chronicle of California youth gangs, by Los Angeles Times staffer Sipchen. In 1990, over 600 people were killed in gang-related homicides in L.A. County alone. Here, Sipchen expertly reveals the gang world through the day-to-day life of Kevin Glass (``Baby Insane'') and the work of detective Patrick Birse (``the Buddha''), who persuaded Glass to turn informer. Glass grew up in a San Diego ghetto known as the `` `Hood,'' turf ruled by the all-black gang of the Neighborhood Crips. By age 11, Glass was smoking pot daily with his `` 'cuz's'' and for kicks stealing cars to lead the cops on high-speed chases. At 14, he was sentenced to three years in youth prison for 23 counts of armed robbery. Back in the 'Hood at 17, Glass and the Neighborhood Crips improved their technique. Stoned on PCP, they stole high- speed cars, carried police scanners, and—armed with automatic pistols, assault rifles, and hunting knives—descended on affluent areas of San Diego, robbing at random, sometimes ramming through storefronts for loads of fancy running suits. Glass, by now a crack addict, was nabbed by his parole officer and jailed pending a hearing when Birse sought him out. Besides his Buddha- like belly and mellow disposition, Birse had a singular talent for creating and working informers. With a promise that Glass wouldn't be reimprisoned, he got the young hoodlum to testify against the Neighborhood Crips. Throughout, Sipchen follows in depth the life and fate of every 'cuz in the 'Hood, as well as that of the Buddha, who worked only the most dangerous cases; and he offers such colorful details as the police name for drive-by shootings: ``AVANHI''—``Asshole vs. Asshole, No Human Involved.'' Superbly written and fresh: Along with LÇon Bing's Do or Die (1991), the clearest view to date of the exploding street-gang phenomena.
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-41997-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
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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