A highly readable treatise on human development—so good it can be recommended to any new or about-to-be ma (and pa). Beginning with conception, controversial science writer Morgan (The Aquatic Ape, 1982, etc.) provides absolutely fascinating material on the days, weeks, and months of development, including fetal rehearsals for breathing that appear to coincide with rapid eye movements. Covering birth, she comments that the tendency toward nighttime arrivals may be a hangover from our pre-hominid past, when the dark was probably safer. Morgan neatly dispatches old myths (smiles are early and real, not symptoms of gas) and calls babies ``he,'' so as not to confuse pronouns with mom. The anatomical compromises between pelvic width, bipedalism, and baby head size, she argues, mean that human newborns are exceptionally helpless and do everything they can to ``control'' their caregivers—making eye contact, crying, imitating, smiling, laughing. The brain almost triples in size the first year, and Morgan reprises the theories of what happened in evolution to favor this development, pooh-poohing the idea that the strains of savannah life put a premium on large brains (other savannah-living primates do just fine with smaller ones). Yes, she still plumps for an aquatic stage of evolution, but here it is watered down to some sort of marshland existence that might have favored certain anatomical and behavioral changes. Chapters on parenting, socialization, and the nursery years remind us how much culture molds society, producing today's state of isolated and ghetto-ized infancy, the need to learn how to care for a child, and the decline of the family. The real tragedy, Morgan avers, is the unwanted child, who runs the risk of continued frustration and abuse and the eventual failure of too little, too late rehabilitation for adolescents. We can learn a lot from and about babies and children, and Morgan is a first-rate guide.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-509895-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
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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