As warm and inviting as chicken soup, but not nearly as sustaining—another example of a book idea better suited for a...
A deli enthusiast embarks on an international tour of his favorite food, looking for the last authentic deli establishments.
Growing up in Toronto, journalist Sax went with his family to a Jewish deli every Friday, where he alternated between corned-beef and salami sandwiches, always preceded by a bowl of matzoh ball soup. When he moved to New York after college, he was understandably excited about moving into deli mecca. However, concerned that delis were becoming merely bastions of tourism and franchising, the author decided to go on a quest—starting in New York, traversing the continent and then moving to Europe—to witness and record their history and future. His story starts out with promise, as he chronicles his one-night gig on the pastrami lines at the famed Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side. The final legs of his journey, which took him to London, France and Poland—home to the roots of much Jewish-American comfort food—are packed with interesting cultural and historical detail. But the middle of the country stretches out bleakly, with each city telling nearly the same story. From Detroit to Chicago to California, there seems to be little variation on the same plight—vestiges of a vibrant deli culture, a few iconic holdouts, but mostly controlled by large companies who supply substandard meat and try to compensate for mediocre food with splashy décor. Sax is an entertaining writer, and the descriptions of the food are often mouthwatering. Unfortunately, there are only so many ways to discuss corned-beef, pastrami and rye bread.
As warm and inviting as chicken soup, but not nearly as sustaining—another example of a book idea better suited for a long-form magazine piece.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-101384-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
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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