Lyrical and practical by turns, an apt portrait of a haunting landscape along with an ample variety of scientific views on...
A look at the Pole and, not incidentally, global warming, through the eyes of the author, the scientists and enthusiasts she interviews, and the journals of Victorian-era polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.
As if to defy the legions of pioneering explorers determined to conquer it, the North Pole is, in fact, an icy sea. In 2002, author Brown journeyed to this non-place aboard the Russian nuclear vessel Yamal, a specially designed "ice breaker" capable of creating a route through the permanently frozen crust of the northernmost latitudes. In each chapter, Brown offers scenes from the voyage: seeing a polar bear, breaking the ice, watching the numbers on the GPS as they come ever closer to 90 degrees. Despite the exotic location, the voyage was essentially a tourist trip, a mostly safe adventure for polar dreamers. Then, switching gears, the author presents selections from Nansen's Farthest North, the journals of the explorer's expedition, originally published in 1897. Nansen is a gifted writer, and the log of his time on the Pole, the brutal conditions, and his relationship with his companion and his dogs, are transportive and gain even more punch when contrasted with Brown's descriptions of the luxuries of the Yamal's nuclear power (long, hot showers, for example). The third element here is comprised of interviews with the people Brown encountered on her trip and experts in the field of polar research. Many of these discussions focus on global warming, specifically its undeniability and complexity. There is also plenty of information about the indigenous people, wildlife, polar history, and daily life today in the northernmost human settlements. Equally fascinating and evocative are Brown's many photos of the land, ice and sea.
Lyrical and practical by turns, an apt portrait of a haunting landscape along with an ample variety of scientific views on the climate and ecology.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-891300-18-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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