While Sykes's reach is wider than it is deep, he poses the questions that we must address if we are to prevent a continued...
In a famous phrase, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once observed that, at least with respect to the government, the right to privacy gave citizens "the right to be let alone." That right is being eroded, says journalist Sykes (Dumbing Down Our Kids, 1995, etc.).
According to Sykes, the Information Age has placed privacy, which has always been precarious, in further jeopardy by making the most intimate information available in a couple of keystrokes. While in the past privacy has been most at risk from governmental intrusion, this is no longer the case. Sykes catalogues ways that commercial applications, which track everything from consumer preferences to medical histories, have begun to erode the private sphere. Many of these collection efforts have good intentions, such as promoting public health or collecting unpaid child support. Once these databases have been compiled, however, they are subject to unintended uses and abuses. For instance, genetic testing conducted to help at-risk individuals avoid medical complications can just as easily be used by insurers to exclude high-risk applicants from coverage. What do Americans think about all of this? The answer seems to be, not much. Sykes is clearly frustrated by our lack of alarm in the face of a problem that has dire implications for individual autonomy. He suggests that our apathy stems from a combination of forces, ranging from our talk-show "tell-all" mentality to our sense that technology has become so ubiquitous that struggling against it is futile. What can we do? Sykes sensibly acknowledges that attempts to carve out legislative protections for individual privacy are unlikely to succeed. Rather, he recommends that we take a modest first step: begin by placing a higher premium on our own privacy.
While Sykes's reach is wider than it is deep, he poses the questions that we must address if we are to prevent a continued erosion of personal privacy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20350-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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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