The first book on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International as the depository institution of choice for drug- dealers, gun-runners, terrorists, and other lawbreakers. Despite a comparatively narrow focus, the painstakingly documented text sets a high standard for the many entries sure to follow. Adams (a former Forbes editor) and Frantz (coauthor, Selling Out, 1989, etc.) devote the bulk of their report to a successful undercover investigation mounted by the US Customs Service in southern Florida. The sting operation broke up a money-laundering ring and produced hard evidence of BCCI's illicit activities long before government agencies in seven countries closed the bank's doors last summer. The authors nonetheless make a good job of recounting how the Arab-owned, Pakistani-run bank (founded in 1972) was organized to evade oversight by any one nation's regulatory authorities. Achievement of this objective, Adams and Frantz show, gave BCCI stewards more than enough rope to hang themselves as they resorted to Ponzi schemes, pitching shady accounts with secret ledgers, and other crimes to keep pace with the demands of investors or their cronies for credit and cash. BCCI apparently did a fair amount of legitimate business as well, but audits commissioned by the Bank of England finally exposed the extent of its deficits and misconduct, making a shutdown inevitable. The authors leave little doubt that BCCI was able to suborn or use pillars of the financial and political community in its zeal to expand, typically on the basis of undeclared equity interests. The ranks of the tarnished encompass the likes of Jimmy Carter, Clark Clifford, and Bert Lance. This sorry tale is not without heroes, though, including Sidney Bailey (Virginia's commissioner of financial institutions), Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and New York City's D.A., Robert Morgenthau. The collapse of BCCI's house of marked cards seems certain to attract further editorial attention. Meanwhile, Adams and Frantz offer a primer that promises to measure up against further coverage.
Pub Date: March 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-72911-X
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
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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