A riveting account of today's FBI and its evolution since the J. Edgar Hoover era to fighting more violent and complex crime. British journalist Jeffreys gathered the material for his finely detailed book while producing a television documentary on the Bureau for PBS and England's Channel Four. (It airs in the US in February.) Reflecting its roots in a popular medium, this is no dry academic treatise, but a lively immersion in the day-to-day grind of law enforcement, giving the reader a realistic sense of how cases are conducted by flesh-and-blood agents. The author takes a levelheaded look at Hoover, who since his death in 1972 has been famous mostly for disregarding civil liberties in his obsessive hunt for American communists and for attempting to derail the civil rights movement. Jeffreys fully acknowledges Hoover's faults but gives him credit for having built one of the world's most effective criminal investigation agencies, a benefit to the nation as the FBI has moved on to fight organized crime and terrorism. One of the most intriguing chapters concerns the Bureau's battles against the Mafia using the controversial Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) statutes. Another noteworthy section deals with FBI agents going undercover to snare criminals, an activity of which Hoover disapproved, partly because of his obsession with good public relations, partly because the very idea of FBI agents posing as criminals conflicted with his idealized vision of squeaky-clean operatives. Jeffreys also discusses the FBI's massive computerized information system, which at its best can provide clues to help bring criminals to justice—and at its worst can get an innocent person in trouble simply for having the same name as a felon. This realistic and fair portrait should be read by anyone with an interest in law enforcement. (2 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-395-67283-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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