An informative account of 1960s stateside military life by a man who lived it.
A debut memoir about a student with learning disabilities who, through guidance, luck, and a stint in the U.S. military, got accepted to Northwestern University’s medical school.
Turner says in an introduction that he’d originally intended to write down his memories only for his children, but then he thought that some of his stories might have wider appeal—and, in this, he’s right. His account provides a close-up view of his late-1960s studies to become a medic; most of his colleagues were later shipped off to Vietnam, where they faced grave danger. Turner’s own two-year stint in the Army is at the heart of the book, but he began his journey in a small Southern Illinois farming community. He writes that his dyslexia and attention deficit disorder resulted in academic challenges throughout his life and that he chose to enlist after he almost failed out of his first year at Blackburn College. He was assigned to a medical dispensary at the Pentagon after medic training, and his descriptions of the Pentagon as a city unto itself, before the existence of cellphones or the internet, are compelling. Turner’s prose is clear and informative, as when he describes the Pentagon internal phone system: “this network included one hundred thousand miles of telephone wire…enough to encircle the globe four times at the equator.” Turner remembers being on duty in Washington in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, and this historical material is often compelling. He also highlights how his grandparents and good teachers helped him during his life, during which he eventually found success as a doctor. That said, the book might have been improved by a stronger edit, particularly when the author tells other people’s war stories. However, readers who are interested in this memoir’s setting—primarily the ’60s, in a predominately male domain—will find this book of interest.
An informative account of 1960s stateside military life by a man who lived it.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73272-891-2
Page Count: 426
Publisher: Burning Barn Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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