A frequently entertaining but equally implausible historical study.
A work of scholarly revisionism that attempts to make the case that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was a serial killer.
Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the author of the Declaration of Independence, is generally considered to be of the greatest Americans in history. However, debut author Cooper contends that he was not only a morally dubious character, but also a likely serial murderer. The author compiles a list of people who died under mysterious circumstances or were clearly murdered, who were also in close proximity to Jefferson, and whom Jefferson had significant motive to kill. His principal incentive, Cooper asserts, was the aggrandizement of his inheritance—in some cases, his massive storehouse of books, which would later be donated to the Library of Congress. Jefferson also sometimes killed people out of simple acrimony, Cooper says, such as the journalist James Thomson Callender; three editors of the Virginia Gazette; and John Robinson, a prominent Virginia politician. (In the last case, the author argues that Jefferson even secretly penned his obituary.) Cooper aims to settle other mysteries as well, such as what Jefferson was up to in the second half of 1766, a period that’s all but undocumented. Ultimately, Cooper claims that Jefferson was never considered a suspect due to his fame. Overall, the author offers a thesis that is tantalizingly original, and he combs through a mountain of available documentary evidence with forensic zeal. However, despite his impressively dogged efforts, Cooper’s case remains a thoroughly circumstantial one, and as a result, it’s far from persuasive. Also, the study concludes with a series of appendices, and some of these appear to be entirely unrelated to the author’s principal argument, including a transcript of President Donald Trump’s remarks about a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
A frequently entertaining but equally implausible historical study.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5497-7679-3
Page Count: 287
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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