A unique historical testimony.
The wartime notes of a German officer and writer.
In 1920, Jünger (1895-1998), who had emerged from World War I as a decorated hero, published Storm and Steel, recounting his experiences as exhilarating and the war itself as mythic. As historian Elliot Neaman writes in an informative foreword, the book and subsequent essays “established Jünger’s reputation as one of Germany’s foremost authors of the war generation.” As the Nazis rose to power, Jünger found himself opposed to their racist views and refused to become involved in Nazi politics. Nevertheless, he served as an officer throughout World War II; in 1941, he was posted to occupied Paris. Jünger’s war journals convey in sensuous, lyrical—yet often chillingly detached—prose daily life in the French capital as well as dire conditions along the Eastern Front between Germany and Russia and the privations his wife and family endured at home in Germany. In the journals of 1941, the war seems far off, except when Jünger hears bombs burst in the distance or is required to witness executions. “My first inclination was to report in sick,” he admits, “but that seemed cheap to me. Furthermore, I thought to myself: maybe it is better that you are present rather than someone else.” Through these journals, we see Jünger consorting with resistors and collaborators, intellectuals and artists, drinking champagne, dining in sumptuous restaurants, and accompanying other officers to nightclubs, where naked women perform. Wandering around the city, he combs through antiquarian bookshops, stops in at galleries, discusses literature with friends, and acutely observes plants and flowers change with the seasons. He recounts in detail his dreams, nightmares, and musings on war and the “moral passivity typical of modern man.” He characterizes Hitler as a madman and his followers as complicit in a cult of hatred and tyranny. As the Allies prevail, however, he sees that success “is making them ruthless” and vengeful, deepening his condemnation of war.
A unique historical testimony.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-231-12740-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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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