Humane, razor sharp, and charmingly told: a must for anyone interested in the story of how books are made.
Everything you wanted to know about the publishing industry in seven easy lessons.
Epstein, former editorial director of Random House and the first recipient of the National Book Award for Distinguished Service to American Letters, takes a stroll down memory lane as he dissects the rather pathetic state of the publishing industry at the dawn of the Internet age. He has certainly earned the right. There is something Forrest Gump–like about Epstein’s ability to turn up at so many important moments in the history of the New York publishing industry—Gump-like, that is, if one can imagine Forrest founding The New York Review of Books, drinking martinis with Edmund Wilson, and reading advance copies of Nabokov’s Lolita. The thesis tucked in amidst the reminiscences is simple: The publishing and retail bookselling industry is in a state of “terminal decrepitude,” laid low by structural problems that the Amazon.coms of the world can do nothing to overcome. Epstein locates the beginning of the industry’s decline in the rise of the suburbs after WWII; the new suburban bookstores had to move books like any other commodity and therefore demanded fast-moving bestsellers instead of the backlist products that had formerly ensured the publishers’ profitability. Little more than anecdotal support is given for this analysis, but Epstein is a man who knows his industry, so the absence of hard evidence is mostly forgivable. The only time he seems less than trustworthy is when he turns to the future; he’s trapped in many of the same cyber-platitudes that bedevil the public at large. But this book, based on Epstein’s Norton Lectures delivered in 1999 at the New York Public Library, is really about memories, not predictions.
Humane, razor sharp, and charmingly told: a must for anyone interested in the story of how books are made.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-04984-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
