A potpourri of pronouncements on latter-day America and Europe from a commentator who's at pains to stress: ``I am a historian, not a prophet.'' Commingling entries from a journal kept during trips to and from the Continent in recent years, Hungarian emigrÇ Lukacs (The Duel, 1991; Confessions of an Original Sinner, 1990, etc.) offers provocative perspectives on the West's past as well as present. To begin with, he asserts that the 20th century lasted but 75 years, from 1914 to 1989 (when the USSR imploded). Moreover, he contends that, the cold war notwithstanding, Communism wasn't the dominant political and social phenomenon of the times—rather, the period's major conflicts were defined by nationalism. While conceding that turning points can be elusive, the author concludes the end of the so-called Modern (as opposed to Ancient or Medieval) Age, which began circa 1500, also may be at hand. Among other factors, he attributes the presumptive transition to the destabilizing emergence of populist demands for tribal power. Meanwhile, Lukacs fears, the admixture of standard-setting aristocracy and representative democracy, which helped advance Western civilization, is in eclipse largely because the authority of contemporary states has waned as their bureaucratic governments have waxed, making them vulnerable to the tyranny of manipulated majorities (or determined minorities). Throughout, he takes an arguably racist line in allusions to the threat posed by Asian immigration and in observations on the importance of White Russians as a bulwark against barbarian hordes. A fin de siäcle appreciation that, for all its idiosyncratic analyses, affords much insight.
Pub Date: Feb. 9, 1993
ISBN: 0-395-58472-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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