Thirtysomething Economist correspondent Hunt ventures to Vietnam to get his fair share of abuse, finding plenty of it when he wanders off the typical tourist path. Hunt, fresh from a break-up with his girlfriend and three career changes (from journalism to law school to stand-up comedy), went to Vietnam to do research for a novel set along the old North Vietnamese infiltration route known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. ``I had to know what happened, both during and after the war,'' he says. ``Was America really in the wrong?'' And Hunt had a third goal: to see how he ``would have fared under the miserable conditions that Americans and their enemies shared in Vietnam.'' The intrepid author embarked on an admittedly ``half-baked plan'' to experience the trail on a rickety motorbike. Our man gave up the novel research soon after he arrived in Vietnam. He ditched the idea of seeing most of the trail after several weeks of physical discomfort (rain, mud, impassable dead ends, potholes the size of Rhode Island, inedible food, unsanitary accommodations) and harassment from police and unfriendly natives. He decided to turn the trip into a less adventurous round of sightseeing. As for the big questions he poses about the war, Hunt does not come close to answering them. Nor does his research on contemporary Vietnam uncover anything that hasn't been documented in a half dozen recent books. The bulk of this fast-reading volume, then, is made up of a blow-by-blow description of Hunt's journey from Hanoi to Saigon, with stops in small towns, mountain villages, cities such as Hue, and a side trip into Laos. Along the way Hunt meets many Vietnamese. He peppers the descriptions of his hosts with language that is, at best, patronizing, for example, calling a large family ``a litter of seven.'' Hunt's most excellent adventure story reveals more about the adventurer than his exploits.
Pub Date: May 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-48128-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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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