Renowned English historian Hill (The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, 1993, etc.) uses popular literature and ballads to shape a stimulating critique of the concept of liberty in 17th-century England's struggle between king and Parliament. Even today, the English Civil War, Cromwell's Protectorate, the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 are still commonly viewed as an inevitable progress toward popular liberty. But what really happened, Hill asserts, is that men of property won absolute power to overrule both the customary rights of the poor (e.g., copyhold and common land) and the restrictions of the Crown. The peasantry gained little from the new freedoms and lost much, including in many cases their land. Hill, of course, is not the first to challenge the so-called Whig view of history by seeing the English revolution as the triumph of a capitalist economy, and in his long career, which included 13 years as master of Balliol College at Oxford University, he has approached this theme before from many different angles. Here he eschews state papers (``Government statements are usually intended to deceive'') and attempts to rescue the landless ex-peasantry from posterity's silence by turning to popular culture for his source material. We move from the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher to John Gay's fiercely satirical Beggar's Opera, which boasted that only beggars, who were outside the law, were truly free. When censorship broke down in the 1640s, the uneducated—even women—could get published, and Hill guides us through his favorite terrain, that of the radical popular movements which briefly appeared, such as the Muggletonians, who denounced the law and lawyers as agents of the rich, and the Diggers, whose spokesman Gerrard Winstanley advocated a return of the land to the common people. Superbly written, Hill's account throws light on a crucial epoch in English history, one that was to have a profound influence on American attitudes.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-713-99119-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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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