An ethical self-help book for all of us who belittle lies, slander, and gossip as ``only words.'' According to Telushkin, a rabbi and popularizer of Jewish lore (Jewish Wisdom, 1994, etc.), it is easier to give up alcohol than to abandon our daily diet of verbal cruelties. The author demonstrates how ``negative truths'' or outright slander can be a prelude to murder, whether issued by a government propaganda office or a gangsta rapper. Even a lie in service of a good cause is reprehensible: Feminist misinformation about 150,000 annual deaths from anorexia exemplifies what Telushkin calls the ``macro'' lie. The American press, in particular, is called to task for needlessly ruining lives. Telushkin presents the case of Oliver Sipple, who saved President Ford's life in 1975. The author maintains that Sipple was cut off from his family and drank himself to death after the papers exposed him as a homosexual. When catching a child in a lie, we are advised to mention the mistruth but not to brand the child a liar. Telushkin offers several harrowing examples of people scarred for life by childhood verbal assaults. White lies for moral reasons are praised, while St. Augustine's absolute value put on the truth is said to be a dangerous extreme. ``Words that heal'' don't get as much treatment here, but freer expression of compliments, regrets, and love is extolled. The book concludes with the verbal equivalent of the ``Great American Smoke Out''—a proposed ``Speak No Evil Day.'' A cynic might anticipate ``See No Evil'' and ``Hear No Evil'' days as well and dismiss much of this book as clichÇd, moralistic pap. But the rabbi's erudite, insightful, yet punchy sermon will have most readers nodding in embarrassed self-recognition. Telushkin delivers a necessary tongue-lashing for a culture that needs to lash its tongue. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-12445-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
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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