Despite tangential wanderings, this account offers an important historical perspective on two continuing struggles.
In this debut memoir, a business executive and newspaper columnist recounts her path from a Mississippi farm to high-level positions in the Midwest, contending with racism and gender discrimination.
A black child of the 1950s and ’60s, born and raised on a family-owned farm in the heart of the segregated South, Ellis always knew she was not cut out for rural life. In 1964, at the age of 14, the author found her inspiration and direction from the broadcasts of Eric Sevareid, who was a regular commentator on Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News. “Someday, I am going to do what Sevareid does,” she told her mother. Years later, while completing her course work for a doctorate in communication arts, she was introduced to the writings of Walter Lippmann: “Eric Sevareid lit the flame within me to become a political columnist. Walter Lippmann set it ablaze.” Lippmann became the subject of her Ph.D. dissertation. Throughout most of her professional career in business and government, she continued to be a columnist for Milwaukee and Kansas City newspapers and blogs. Ellis married young, while still in college. The union produced two sons, but, according to the author, it soon became abusive and lasted only a few years. Several relationships followed, one of them also abusive. But more than 11 years after her divorce, she tied the knot with a man named Frank, to whom she is still happily married. In her book, enhanced by family photos, Ellis sets her personal battles within the context of the civil rights and feminist movements, both of which helped fuel her determination. She recounts stories of sexual harassment that are especially relevant in today’s #MeToo environment. And the early sections offer striking portraits of segregation, as she recounts cross burnings in front of her house and the murder of a friend’s father who was involved in voter registration. But her academic training sometimes gets in the way of a compelling narrative. A long section detailing the works and philosophies of Lippmann is a distraction from the engrossing personal tale and has the feel of a dissertation presentation.
Despite tangential wanderings, this account offers an important historical perspective on two continuing struggles.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64114-753-8
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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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