A useful, entertaining and unusual guide that turns troubleshooting into an art form.
Debut author Maxham, a founder of a data-mining company who also pilots airplanes, is the kind of guy who likes to figure out how and why machines break. It occurred to him that this skill—troubleshooting—is one that everybody should learn: “I want to put you back in control by giving you the tools and mindset needed to have a healthy and productive relationship with the machines in your world,” he writes. The brilliance of his handsomely packaged book is in how he generalizes troubleshooting for virtually any machine or system. He offers numerous strategies for how to assess, address and fix problems, and his solutions run from the obvious (turn the machine off and on again) to the complex (“[M]alfunctioning parts, each with their own patterns, can act together to produce much more complicated and intermittent failures”). Maxham occasionally employs some unexpected methods, such as when he applies therapists’ skills to computer programming, because, he says, “machine problems are actually human problems.” Maxham’s study is a highly intriguing work that’s a deep-dive how-to guide for service technicians of any ilk. However, the book could be equally valuable to lay readers who are keen on learning how to diagnose problems. Although Maxham uses several technical examples and discusses theories that may be a bit advanced for some readers, he lightens the book with well-chosen, cleverly captioned color photographs to illustrate conceptual points. Several tables and diagrams also act as useful supplements. Overall, Maxham’s style is informative, engaging and laced with humor.
A quirky read that may be a breath of fresh air for professional and novice troubleshooters alike.
Pub Date: May 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497522152
Page Count: 356
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
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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