A tribute to humanity’s inquisitive spirit and a useful guidebook for readers looking for a little inspiration or purpose.
An exploration of man’s evolving search for answers, featuring short profiles of historically influential theologians, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians.
Chavooshian’s debut is a chronicle of figures who dared to ask the most significant questions about man’s existence. Some were theologians, such as Jesus Christ, Muhammad, and Ramakrishna, positing man’s place in the universe and the nature of his creation; others were scientists, such as Hippocrates, Charles Darwin, or Albert Einstein, who dared to question the mechanics of the physical world. Many of them owed the language and manner of their ideas to early philosophers, including Plato, Socrates, and Sun Tzu, whose methods would be adopted (and sometimes rejected) by later figures, such as Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Chavooshian profiles all these people, along with more than 70 other great thinkers from throughout history, in loose chronological order, summarizing their contributions in succinct but thoroughly researched chapters, sometimes accompanied by images. Despite each chapter’s thrift, they present their subjects’ achievements with great enthusiasm, offering commentary on how earlier schools of thought helped shape their ideas. Each chapter ends with a helpful, encouraging list of each figure’s principal works. Chavooshian presents theologians of Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu origins alongside Christian teachers and features Arab and other Eastern philosophers alongside Western peers. In nearly all cases, he presents their ideas without judgment, although he does take note when he believes that certain ways of thinking lead to violence, fascism, or anti-Semitism—such as Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali’s development of Sharia law or the twisting of Karl Marx’s communism. Although it’s by no means a comprehensive collection—it’s particularly light on philosophers, theologians, and scientists from the 20th century, for example—it makes for an excellent reference source on some of the most influential people in mankind’s pursuit of knowledge.
A tribute to humanity’s inquisitive spirit and a useful guidebook for readers looking for a little inspiration or purpose.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4787-4372-9
Page Count: 446
Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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