Yet another entrant in the anecdotal, pop-psych literature on marriage and divorce, this one from the coauthors of Second Chances (1989). Psychologist/marriage counselor Wallerstein and science/medical writer Blakeslee announce sententiously that Americans ``share a profound sense of discomfort with the present state of marriage and the family, even wondering sometimes if marriage as an institution can survive.'' They go on to analyze the life habits of 50 mostly white, comfortably middle-class, well- educated couples in the San Francisco Bay Area—a group that Wallerstein admits is narrow but which she claims is socially trend-setting. The couples neatly cleave into four fuzzy categories of marriage: romantic, rescue, companionate, and traditional. When interviewed, the couples had all been married for more than nine years, had one or more children, regarded their marriage as happy, and were willing to be interviewed separately and together. Other of Wallerstein's previous studies, making use of similarly small, homogenous samples, have rightly come under attack by her peers (Newsweek, February 6, 1989) for their built-in statistical invalidity, but she has not taken their criticisms to heart. Her conclusions generally boil down to the expected: that in good marriages each partner must respect the other and let the other be his or her own person. The book is studded with such startlingly bald truisms in the place of meaningful analysis. Only occasionally do the authors hit on a useful point, as when they observe that all successful marriages, rather than being conflict-free, make allowance for ``the expression of difference, conflict, and anger'' and that an adolescent in the household is a blasting cap that can blow apart the stoutest marital fortress. One in two marriages now ends in divorce in this country, a sadly telling statistic. Regrettably, it also seems as if one in two psychology doctorates ends in a generally superficial book.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-89919-969-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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