The bloody world of the modern revolutionary, as seen by free- lance writer (Harper's, etc.) and documentary filmmaker Anderson. Basing his report on firsthand observation, Anderson describes the life, if you can call it that, of five different guerrilla groups, each with its particular coloration. The Polisario of Western Sahara, trapped inside a 1500-mile-long wall built by the invading army of King Hassan II of Morocco, control every aspect of their peoples' lives with ruthless efficiency. The FMLN of El Salvador, by contrast, favor romantic excess in the form of bad poetry and liberal sex. The Afghani mujahedin recite the Koran and stone adulterers to death. And while Palestinians in the Gaza Strip mythologize their movement's origins, the Karen of Burma have no use for ideology, fighting a purely ethnic war for independence. Enough common elements do crop up, however, for Anderson to paint an overall portrait of guerrillas as an international tribe of violence-prone outcasts. With the exception of the FMLN, battles are waged only by men, with women kept outside the power structure. Children often play a role: Anderson chillingly describes kids in El Salvador assembling rocket-propelled grenades. Fear, oppression, and death are everyday events. Compensation comes by way of romanticizing the past and future, and by casting the struggle in religious terms, with fallen warriors as martyrs. The focus here is on individual guerrillas as they make love, build families, set out to slit throats. But the movements are communal and, within each group, shared histories become ``the repositories of their cultural identity, as essential...as the weapons with which they fight.'' While Anderson keeps a neutral stance, his evidence does not, suggesting that the guerrilla life is more Boschian than beatific. It took guts to research and write this; relentlessly grim— not through Anderson's fault, since he does a superb reporting job- -it's no picnic to read either.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-8129-2085-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
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
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
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