The publication of Velikovsky's heterodox scientific theories in 1950 precipitated a ripe little media cause celebre. Now, belatedly, we have Velikovsky's memoir of the affair, largely completed in 1956 but with bits added up to his death in 1979: a blend of reminiscence and self-justification with an amateurish dossier on the bad behavior of his opponents. All the material here has long since seen the light of day, and all of Velikovsky's charges have long since been either conceded or dismissed. No one now denies that many prominent scientists of the time, who rushed to print hysterical condemnations and utterly incompetent critiques of Worlds in Collision, and worse still, put pressure on the publishers to drop the book, made a sorry spectacle of themselves. But neither is anyone (true believers aside) likely to grant Velikovsky a martyr's crown: talk of suppression seems wide of the mark when applied to a best-selling author whose views have received an extensive airing. Velikovsky invests the whole affair with enormous historical significance and high drama. Anyone who raises objections is an "accuser"; any suggestion that the manuscript be refereed is "censorship"; every incident is appealed to "the verdict of tomorrow." The evidence of dark doings by the scientific mafia is larded with reference to what it all really meant ("As a psychoanalyst I have analyzed the sources of the fury and the roots of the blind opposition to my theories. . .") and how well Velikovsky handled it. Thus, we hear the unctuous little parables with which he confounded doubters ("I told a little story: A little girl came to the baker. . ."), and the gentle reproofs he administered to weak reeds about him (to his harassed publisher: you were in the war, yes? "Then why are you so afraid?"). Above all, we hear an endless succession of anecdotes identifying Velikovsky with great men of history, thinkers at first ridiculed for their originality and afterwards revered—not merely the inevitable references to Galileo, but a full budget of Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Agassiz, Darwin, Pasteur, Freud, Tesla, Einstein, and the Wright brothers. Though the affair has some significance for the sociology of science, this book contributes nothing to our understanding of it. Only for those who collect every scrap from the Master's pen.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1982
ISBN: 1906833176
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1982
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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