Yates, as the proverbial fly on the wall, observes the internal workings of Chrysler, from the boardrooms to the assembly lines, at a critical moment in its recent history. Long-time automobile observer Yates, a regular contributor to Car and Driver and other magazines, was allowed unlimited access to the Chrysler Corporation from 1992 on, just when the company was preparing its follow-up to its phenomenally successful minivan line. Chrysler, which had enjoyed fat sales since the 1984 introduction (and invention) of the minivan, had grown soft in its triumph; designers were still relying on the old K car design for new models, and quality control was at an all-time low. Chrysler's next car would make or break the company. Yates ably reconstructs the endless meetings and virtual reinvention of the assembly line that occurred over the next few years. The line was shifted to the Japanese method of kan ban, or ``just in time'' inventory control, which also allowed control of costs by having parts suppliers key their production to Chrysler's needs. Chrysler also took on and turned around AMC/Renault—where workers still used vacuum tubes available only from the Soviet Union—by restoring the Jeep. Yates is at his best when he details the actual building of cars: the repetition of trials, the methods of applying paint, and the sizes of the nuts and bolts. He also admires the ingenuity of the Chrysler engineers, who were under enormous pressure not only to make a new car quickly but also to make it cheaply. The other aspects of Chrysler's history (for example, lee Iacocca's legacy and the corporate infighting under the shadow of Kirk Kerkorian) are less well rendered, but it's the engineers and the assembly line workers, after all, who eventually built Chrysler's new pride and joy, the Town & Country. An informed history of a company in turmoil and the inside story of America's obsession, for better or worse, with cars. (9 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-316-96708-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
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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