This overview of a tragic war soon reveals itself to be an extremely biased account of a pivotal time in US-Indian relations. Old West historian Robinson begins with the events leading up to the final war between the Lakota and the US Army in 187677, a war mostly remembered for the Army's humiliating defeats, such as Custer's Last Stand at Little Bighorn. As Robinson points out, the campaign left the Lakota and northern Cheyenne nations decimated and confined to government-controlled reservations. The misconception of history is not difficult to understand: Whites have tended to exaggerate their losses at the hands of Indians in order to justify taking Indian land. Robinson's agenda is a little more complex: He seems to want to glorify whites rather than set the record straight. He uses the testimonies of almost exclusively white witnesses, writing that Indians' accounts are not reliable because ``their fear of government reprisal, while unfounded, was very real.'' (Perhaps Robinson doesn't consider over 200 years of hostilities and broken treaties to constitute a foundation for fear.) The author often presents the statements of whites with little commentary, suggesting that they are accurate (even calling one derogatory comment about Indians a ``candid appraisal''). When he does offer comment, it is to condone shocking utterances, such as Gen. William T. Sherman's remark, ``The more I see of these Indians the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers''which Robinson kindly terms ``the most extreme expression of a profound dilemma.'' And while Indians attack settlers with ``appalling ferocity,'' no comment is offered as the US Army attacks village after village filled with Indian women and children. An outrageous whitewash. (16 pages b&w photos, 3 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43025-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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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