Shimmering dispatches from the far, far reaches of the geographical imagination, from the captivating, highly polished hand of Thubron (Turning Back the Sun, 1992, etc.). To say that central Asia is a place rich in history and legend is to put it mildly: land of the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, of Samarkand and Tashkent, of Alexander, Tamerlane, and the great Khans...Kafiristan! Thubron drops in to measure its doings since the Great Fall of '91. He discovers a moody and unsettled place. From the endless cotton fields of the central plateau to the shepherds of the high Pamirs, all is in flux. Some towns are raucous with a sense of freedom and possibility; others just can't get their wheels turning, stuck with the political hacks of yesteryear, and the feeling is very much down in the dumps. At every turn Thubron bumps into one religious movement or another: Baptists in Kirgizhia, German Mennonites in Uzbekistan, a synagogue here, a cathedral there, and—not surprisingly—so many mosques you couldn't throw a brick without hitting one. The weaving of Islam into the political life of the republics, though still nascent, is a foregone conclusion, and the people of the region voice the same fears expressed everywhere whenever church invades state: the possibilities of sexual discrimination, religious persecution, interference in education (not that the nation-state has necessarily done so well in these venues, locals add). Thubron laces the narrative with gobs of history. Each place he visits comes drenched in a mythic past, and not just the ancient variety typified by Mongol hordes and the silk road, but also some of the more recent vintages: gulags pepper the land, and it was in Kazakhstan that the Soviets tested their atomic weapons and built the vilest of their heavy industry. Life has always been eventful in Central Asia; no doubt it will remain so. And if Thubron can't predict the future, he does provide all manner of telling detail to bring the region out of fable and onto terra firma. (First serial to CondÇ Nast Traveler)
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-018226-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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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