An evocative, poetic account of rugged terrain, the men and animals who inhabited it, and the complex realities of...
A coming-of-age memoir that illuminates the pleasures and problems of running a conservation-oriented sheep and cattle ranch.
After college, with no clear direction for his future, Andrews took a summer job as a ranch hand on Sun Ranch, a 25,000-acre property in Montana. The ranch “straddles one of the most important wildlife corridors in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.” The farm animals cohabitated with grizzly bears, massive elk herds and, more problematically, wolves. The guiding idea of the venture “was to integrate ranching into a functional, natural ecosystem.” The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 presented a recurring threat to the cattle and therefore the economic viability of the ranch. Park officials tracked local wolf packs with radio collars as they tracked elk. The local pack grew in numbers, and in 2003, when the elk sought higher ground, the wolves began preying on the hundreds of sheep being used for weed control. The USDA gunned them down from a helicopter, but a new wolf pack replaced them. Andrews looks back on the painful task of dealing with another pack of wolves that was picking off the cattle. The ranch was owned by a millionaire whom the author describes as “a well-intentioned conservationist and an avid fisherman.” Neither he nor Andrews, who was born in Seattle, were native to the area, but both loved it passionately. The problem was that even after combining ranching with ecotourism, the venture was a money-loser. The only way for the owner to make up the difference was to sell a portion to developers. Andrews spent a year on the ranch, toughening up in the process and finding his vocation as a writer on outdoor subjects and as a conservationist ranch manager.
An evocative, poetic account of rugged terrain, the men and animals who inhabited it, and the complex realities of sustainable agriculture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1083-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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