Powerful and indispensable—a serious antidote to the recent feel-good murmurings voiced on nuclear power’s behalf.
Nuclear-power researcher Brack presents an enlightening survey of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis and its context within recent nuclear-power disasters and snafus.
This vital resource is the fruit of Brack’s years investigating and writing on nuclear power and “the industrial history of a nation that perfected the manufacture of hand tools and atomic weapons but failed to design and build safe nuclear reactors, including those it exported to other countries such as Japan.” It starts with a synopsis of the Fukushima Daiichi accident that resulted from the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan in March 2011. The book intends to allow nonexperts to get a handle on the flood of information regarding the event, and to gauge the meaning of microsieverts, nanograys and becquerels when one is trying to understand the health physics involved. The author takes a slow stroll through the event sequence at Fukushima Daiichi, exploring architectural design and estimated release data, and sets them against the radiological impact of the Chernobyl meltdown. Before he closely examines the effects of Chernobyl, Brack tenders a concise, readable number of definitions and concepts related to nuclear technology—from the gamma camera to quick-release accidents to stochastic and nonstochastic effects to transuranic elements to cold shutdown and vitrification. Readers will need this understanding to negotiate the waters of the Chernobyl-derived contamination history, with radiological evidence from lichen to mother’s milk, and the author provides enough well-vetted source material—most of it available on the Internet—to keep readers busy and terrified for years to come. Then he gives a close reading of the decommissioning of the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Plant—a facility close to his home base in Hulls Cove, Maine—and how it exemplifies the “significant loss of radiological controls” that occur during everyday nuclear-reactor operation. Brack’s revelations in this radical tome will make readers’ skin crawl.
Powerful and indispensable—a serious antidote to the recent feel-good murmurings voiced on nuclear power’s behalf.Pub Date: May 31, 2011
ISBN: 978-0982995167
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Pennywheel
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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