A remarkably well-researched history of a football team that should appeal to fans of the school or the game.
A debut sports book offers a comprehensive history of a military academy’s football program and the development of the game itself.
The Morgan Park Military Academy was first established in 1873 in Chicago. The school was then called the Mt. Vernon English, Classical, and Military Academy. According to extant records, the academy first participated in an organized football game in 1893 and fielded a team for a full season of competition the following year. Ziemba chronicles the arc of the football program’s growth in detail so journalistically microscopic the study is simultaneously impressive as a feat of archival precision and tedious to read. The academy was originally a part of the University of Chicago. The coach of the college team, Amos Alonzo Stagg, quickly took over as the leader of the academy players as well, using the school as a kind of farm squad to train and recruit talent for the university. The author tracks not only the academy team’s triumphs and defeats—it had its first losing season in 1903—but also the school’s intramural disputes, like its controversial decision in 1900 to close its doors to female students. Ziemba’s account is not only spangled with black-and-white photographs of the campus and key figures, but is filled with statistical information as well, including an appendix that documents the team’s results for decades. His scholarly rigor is indefatigable and remarkable, although the results of it are unlikely to grab the attention of anyone who doesn’t have some kind of personal relationship to Morgan Academy. But Ziemba’s examination of the evolution of football from a “brutal, controversial display that was more of a curiosity” to the “obsession it remains today” is engrossing. The author expertly discusses how different football was as a game in its embryonic stage: “The bloodshed and physical dismay endured by football players in the early days of the game was certainly not anything new. With little padding, archaic rules, and often ill-advised officials, the examples of horrific injuries and multiple deaths on the football field had become alarming.” For readers interested in an astute history of the game’s inception, this is a worthy option.
A remarkably well-researched history of a football team that should appeal to fans of the school or the game.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64237-341-7
Page Count: 474
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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