A deliciously engaging tale of flower-power.
An exuberant romp through the surprisingly bizarre world of orchid collectors, where decorous matrons swoon over blooms,
bureaucrats act like SWAT teams, and reputable scientists punch customs officers in the face. Hansen's (Motoring with Mohammed, 1991, etc.) skeptical mind makes him the perfect guide to an activity that now generates nine billion dollars annually and rivals the 17th-century Dutch tulip mania in the fanaticism it inspires. During travels in the Far East, while attempting to help rain-forest villagers raise orchids for export, Hansen learned about CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), a Geneva-based environmental agency that, in his opinion, operates more like a group of thugs than an informed consortium of scientists and conservationists. Without any supporting data, they refuse to permit botanists and nurserymen to collect and breed orchids CITES considers endangered. Those who transgress their rules have their homes searched and their possessions, as well as their orchids, confiscated—or they wake to find a posse, armed with machine guns, surrounding their greenhouse. Hansen also introduces us to collectors like octogenarian Eleanor (who calls a provocative orchid of hers "a bodice ripper"), Terry (who has grown more than a million rare orchids and describes orchid breeding as an "illness, an addiction"), and Tom (who braves heat and insects to save wild orchids in northern Minnesota from destruction by road crews). Hansen's research into the trade took him around the world, from Borneo to Copenhagen, and his account of these visits is accompanied by descriptions of different orchids, the history of orchid fever (which began in ancient China), and an analysis of its current popularity. It is estimated that there are today four to five million orchid collectors worldwide.
A deliciously engaging tale of flower-power.Pub Date: March 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-45141-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
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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