A fulsome life story of an evangelistic lecturer, a champion of Babbittry, and author of the prototypical self-helper, the late Professor Napoleon Hill, is offered by an interested party. Ritt is executive director, secretary, treasurer, and general factotum of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. With freelance writer Landers he presents, in tones of awe entirely unjustified by the facts provided, the tale of a self-made man. Hill, in case you didn't know, was the author of Think and Grow Rich! and other popular self-starters for the lumpen. It all began in 1908 when, as Hill often said, no less a personage than Andrew Carnegie challenged the young reporter to interview men of the Scottish captain of industry's ilk, discover the secrets of their successes, and report the results to an anxious world. This became Hill's mission over the years, through three marriages, financial Waterloo after Waterloo, and a generally feckless career. Stalwart Nap learned the way to wealth and general good times from the likes of Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and lots of other high achievers. (Unfortunately, the extensive records of his interviews were lost in a fire, he lamented.) Believing that the only limitations are self-imposed, he billed himself as an attorney-at-law, which he was not. He exaggerated his net worth and fibbed about his age. Over and over, in the sometimes purplish prose of his biographers, ``he mulled over his philosophy, his life's work, his greater purpose in being.'' The hokum finally paid off, particularly because of a symbiotic partnership with W. Clement Stone, the beau ideal of insurance salesmen. A puff piece for fans, on the brink of parody. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen).
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-94001-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
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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