Stone, the Manhattan assistant district attorney who investigated the fixing of The $64,000 Question and other TV quiz shows, takes us step by step through his complex inquiry, finding ``lying so pervasive that it was woven into the fabric of American life.'' Writing with free-lance editor-writer Yohn, Stone, who's now in private practice, begins in August 1958, when a Dotto contestant came to his office complaining that the show had been rigged. Soon after, Herbert Stempel, a CCNY graduate forced to lose to Columbia professor Charles Van Doren on Twenty-One, claimed that the show's producer, Daniel Enright, had scripted and coached his appearances and given him answers. Ironically, the fixing of TV quiz shows was not illegal at the time, though the success of these lucrative programs depended on public perception of their ``integrity.'' The fiasco would have been limited, Stone contends, if producers like Enright had told the truth. Instead, with contracts and reputations to lose, they lied and pressured contestants—mostly ``well- educated'' citizens made famous by quiz victories—to lie, first to Stone himself, and then—despite his warnings—to a grand jury. Conflicting testimony and a billowing coverup led to congressional hearings, a second grand jury, and indictments for perjury. This story of corruption also involves lawyers, whom Stone wanted to investigate for suborning perjury, and a judge who, in Stone's view, ``danced to Enright's tune.'' What was never clarified (in part because Stone never made William Paley, Robert Sarnoff, et al., testify) was ``the nature of decision-making at the highest corporate levels that led to the proliferation of fixed quizzes.'' Although quiz-show rigging became a federal crime, the TV industry, Stone says, diluted proposed legislation for greater regulation. A through and sobering document, laying out a case of deceit and fraud before the public that was the victim. (Nineteen b&w illustrations—not seen.)
Pub Date: April 26, 1992
ISBN: 0-8135-1753-2
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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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