A well-crafted, creative rumination on methods of viewing sustainability.
Szoradi uses drawings and anecdotes to promote sustainability in this debut work of nonfiction.
The concept of sustainability operates on many levels—sustainable homes, businesses and jobs, energy usage—all of which can improve the long-term health of the economy. Szoradi contends that the key to reaching these goals begins with the simple act of observation. As the author explains, “Active observation can fuel critical thinking, which is often a key driver of innovation. In turn, innovation can support sustainable design that is cost-effective and practical.” The book is built around ink-on-paper drawings based on observations that the author made over the course of his travels. They often depict homes or home features that exemplify some innovative method of working with—rather than against—the natural world. It isn’t all solar panels and waterless urinals, however. An architect, inventor, and the founder of an energy-intelligent lighting company, Szoradi is a modern-day polymath with ideas on just about everything. His insights frequently return to his own life experiences, including the house he built in suburban Philadelphia that was named by Cisco Systems as one of the “most ecofriendly homes in America.” Though the frequent drawings are ostensibly the raison d'être of this volume, the vast majority of space is given over to prose, and it’s in the text that the author’s ideas are most clearly expressed. Szoradi’s expertise and facility with stats are impressive, and he says something truly thought-provoking every page or so (as when he describes how he planted shade-providing trees to the east of his house and wind-shielding trees to the north). However, frequent allusions to his own successes and his attempts to coin buzzwords like “perspectiventure” (perspective plus venture) may irk some. Readers may be as inspired to action as Szoradi insists they will, and there are some undeniably intriguing ideas here that should interest people of all stripes.
A well-crafted, creative rumination on methods of viewing sustainability.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1155-9
Page Count: 396
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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