A doctor with a conscience celebrates the preciousness of all human life in grim stories of death and dying among society's outcasts. The site of these graphic accounts is one 17-bed unit at the Spellman Center for HIV Related Diseases at New York City's St. Clare's Hospital. For over three years Baxter was a physician at this ``improbable crucible of despair and hope,'' treating paroled rapists, homeless alcoholics, drug addicts, and drag queens under third-world conditions—cockroaches and rodents in filthy rooms where ceilings seem always to be crumbling and the plumbing doesn't work; doctors in other parts of the hospital refuse Baxter's requests for consultations with his patients. He describes his typical workday with its multiple frustrations and seemingly insoluble problems, and the routine of Sister Pascal Comforti, director of pastoral care, whose problems with patients and their often fragmented families seem even more difficult than the author's. He presents dignified, compassionate portraits of patients (with names changed), including foul-mouthed Rosa, found comatose and half-naked in a subway tunnel; Sarah, who has sex in the hospital stairwells and smokes crack in the linen closets; Todd, a partial transsexual who refuses a needed medical procedure that he fears would mar his beautiful breasts; and demented Enrique, an ex-prisoner with both tuberculosis and AIDS. Baxter takes his title from Matthew 25:40, in which Jesus says to the righteous: ``Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'' These words explain for Baxter why caring for such people is so necessary. Among the lessons he draws from his patients is that we are all living on borrowed time, and that if the ``least of these'' can face death without fear, so can we. Intended to inspire, this powerful book succeeds more often in shocking and angering the reader at the harrowing conditions to which these patients are subjected.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-517-70699-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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
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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