Too often obfuscates rather than illuminates its celebrated subject.
Latest entry in the Books That Changed the World series, this one summarizing and analyzing what is arguably the most influential treatise on warfare ever written.
Strachan (History of War/Oxford; The First World War, 2004, etc.) spends as much time agonizing over the difficulty of his task as he does executing it. The textual difficulties with Clausewitz are indeed formidable. As Strachan—a persistent and imaginative scholar—ably shows, On War is a work in progress: unfinished, self-contradictory, tentative in places, dogmatic in others, grounded firmly in its author’s battle experiences during the Napoleonic wars. Strachan also notes that there are no great English translations of the multi-volume work, which first appeared in Berlin between 1832 and 1834, and that translators have disagreed on how to render some of Clausewitz’s key terms. Unfortunately, this sort of close textual analysis and attendant hand-wringing go on far too long for the general reader. Some 30 pages in, Strachan finally introduces us to Clausewitz and swiftly summarizes his career. (He’d served in the Prussian army and even appeared at the margins of Waterloo.) This is interesting, but it’s followed by more pages devoted to Clausewitz’s style, diction and dialectics; these will no doubt appeal to fellow historians of war but will send many other readers to the Land of Nod. Once Strachan finally begins to conduct his tour of On War, interest once again revives. He explores the differences between strategy and tactics, considers Clausewitz’s concept of absolute victory, examines the notions of escalation and balance of power. Although the author resists facile contemporary applications of the principles in On War, he does allude to Colin Powell’s admiration for Clausewitz, and some later sentences about insurgencies seem pregnant with present relevance.
Too often obfuscates rather than illuminates its celebrated subject.Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-87113-956-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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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