Lacks punch because it lacks supporting evidence.
An observer’s thoughts on America’s perceived moral decline and its government’s tendency toward autocracy.
According to Howard, America began sliding toward autocracy soon after it was founded, thanks to Chief Justice John Marshall, a John Adams appointee, whose federalistic decisions helped to concentrate power in the executive branch. Add to that a movement away from America’s "basicly (sic) Christian moral heritage," coupled with meddling by liberal and/or socialist elements within the government, and Howard sees the country rapidly heading toward the fate that met the ancient democracies in Greece and Rome. To put the current situation in context, Howard devotes large sections to explanations of the governments of the United States and Britain, as well as outlines key differences between ancient and modern democracies. However, he fails to provide many of the factual underpinnings necessary to back up his claims, such as the idea that "the total removal of limitations of the male democratic franchise" (i.e. allowing African-Americans and women to vote) limited democracy. Some of Howard’s other ideas that lack support include the notion that the intent of the Constitution’s framers more than 200 years ago should be the main factor in assessing a law’s constitutionality. Similarly, it’s debatable whether or not the British have “diluted their traditions” by allowing large numbers of immigrants into their country, or even that the United States is in a state of moral decline. These assertions are very much open to dispute, yet the author treats them as givens. This book begs for citations, or at least a bibliography, but the facts to back up the claims simply are not there.
Lacks punch because it lacks supporting evidence.Pub Date: May 7, 2001
ISBN: 978-0-7388-5189-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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