A sometimes-touching memoir that will particularly delight the author’s friends and loved ones.
Vold’s debut memoir focuses on the 30 years he devoted to the U.S. Air Force.
The author was born in 1940 and grew up on the eastern plains of South Dakota. His father was a farmer, but it wasn’t the most rewarding profession for him, especially during the Depression years. Vold says that he was deeply influenced by his father’s experience when he made the decision to chart his own course. After a brief stint in college at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, the author dropped out and enlisted in the Air Force. He was initially rejected because of his farsightedness, he says, but he successfully reapplied for an officer-commissioning program. After this point, the memoir largely chronicles his successful military career, which spanned three decades; he retired in 1989 as a chief master sergeant. During his service, he traveled widely within the United States and abroad, and was stationed in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The most dramatic elements of Vold’s tale take place then, when he worked as a boom operator, helping to refuel other planes in flight; on one particular mission, he recalls, flying over the Gulf of Tonkin he could see the North Vietnamese fire missiles at American aircraft. After his retirement, he went back to school at California State University, Chico, and eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. Vold’s remembrance is filled with photos and he explains them with plentiful commentary, tracking the arc of his professional life, as well as his developing family. At its best, this autobiography is candidly thoughtful. For example, the author tells of how, as a young man, his horizons were broadened regarding race relations; he notes that he, a white man, had never met a person of color before he entered the military. Also, his accounts regarding his father radiate a heartwarming affection, as in a section in which he recounts various dreams that he’s had about him. However, Vold’s minutely detailed exposition of his military career—including the most quotidian parts—may not interest many general readers.
A sometimes-touching memoir that will particularly delight the author’s friends and loved ones.Pub Date: March 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63417-861-7
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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