An informed and gloomy appraisal of the prospects for democracy in Russia from the longtime Moscow corespondent of the (Manchester) Guardian, who concludes that the present political system may be one of the many revolutions from above in Russian history that end in failure. Steele (Andropov in Power, 1983, etc.) derives his conclusion both from Russian history and from his own experiences as a correspondent. He makes the telling observation that, when Yeltsin stood on a tank to proclaim his resistance to the attempted coup in 1991, the crowd that applauded him was fewer than 200 in number; only when the coup was safely over did huge crowds emerge. The coup failed, Steele says, not because of mass resistance but because the plotters lost their nerve and the Army commanders split. Nor is he impressed by the ability of Russians to run a democratic system. Yeltsin's contempt for the Supreme Soviet—the majority of which originally supported him—was such that he refused for almost a year to appear before it or to meet with its leaders. He believes that Yeltsin deliberately provoked the hard-line faction in the Parliament into an injudicious response, which gave him an excuse to use the Army. Yeltsin also manipulated the constitutional referendum held at the same time as the election in 1993 to prevent opposition to its approval and to increase his own power. Steele's conclusions are not entirely pessimistic: He believes that considerable freedom has already been established and that the gains that have been made cannot be entirely reversed. Overall, however, he sees Russia as a ``society without law'' and he questions whether the country will not take ``a long time to evolve towards genuine democracy, if ever.'' Steele is better on contemporary events than on history, and better on politics than on society at large, but his deep knowledge of Russia over the last three decades gives his conclusions great and worrisome authority.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-674-26837-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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