A minor contribution to the academic literature, although likely to interest social-science students.
An arid sociological treatise on race as an “important social fact” in the postwar world.
Winant (Sociology/Temple Univ.) examines the emergence of racial politics and various civil-rights movements in the modern US, Brazil, South Africa, and nations of the European Union. He hypothesizes that shifts in the post-WWII geopolitical balance of power (especially the rise of decolonization, migration, and national liberation movements) pushed racial politics to the forefront around the world, demolishing the status quo everywhere; in almost every major social upheaval since 1945, he holds, the issue of race was central. In describing these upheavals, the author sheds light on a few contemporary matters, such as the rapidly changing face of European politics in the wake of massive migrations from North Africa and Asia. He does little, however, to formulate an overarching theory of racial politics or to develop a comparative overview that explains why Brazilian race relations differ from those of the US, say, or Holland. Contrary to the subtitle, much of the narrative here is given over to an analysis of 19th-century historical trends and movements (among them colonialism, imperialism, and abolitionism), and the author does not improve on less theoretical but better-grounded historical studies such as Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll (not reviewed) and Hugh Thomas’s The Slave Trade (1997), to say nothing of such contemporary sociological work as Cornel West’s provocative Race Matters (1993). Also, Winant’s less-than-startling conclusions are couched in the jargon of the trade (“Early imperialisms balanced their accumulative economic aspirations—both as states and as a range of proto-capitalist enterprises—with politically and culturally regulatory agendas”), which makes for tedious reading indeed.
A minor contribution to the academic literature, although likely to interest social-science students.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-465-04345-2
Page Count: 564
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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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