The diagnosis rings truer than the cures.
A Harvard law professor presents the case that America has become structurally compromised with a pervasiveness that transcends individual corruption.
In a book based on a series of lectures, Lessig (Republic Lost: 2.0, 2015), co-founder of Creative Commons, focuses on how the country’s institutions are no longer serving the purposes for which they were designed. They have succumbed to third-party interests: wealthy, corporate, market forces, all of which have vested interests in helping the rich get richer. “My belief is that we have allowed core institutions of America’s economic, social, and political life to become corrupted,” writes the author. “Not by evil souls, but by good souls. Not through crime, but through compromise.” In our current situation, wealth exerts its influence wherever such influence can manifest itself, from campaign financing that restricts the choices of candidates from which average Americans can choose to academic research funded for the benefit of those doing the funding. Lessig also shows how pharmaceutical companies have compromised the profession of psychiatry, promoting the dubious concept of “chemical imbalance” that can be balanced by prescription, and how market forces and technological disruption have transformed media in general and journalism in particular, catering to the appetite for junk food where democracy demands nourishment. The author is more convincing in his case against “institutional corruption” than in finding the solution. As he writes in the chapter on the media, where he suggests that journalism might better become more transparently partisan, some readers might think his proposal “seems just nuts.” Similarly, his borrowing of a proposal for “deliberative polling”—leaving discussions of issues and nominations in the hands of 1,000 or so randomly selected yet representative participants—isn’t likely to be adopted any time soon. Yet the book has value in showing how much that ails America isn’t illegal or even unethical but systemic.
The diagnosis rings truer than the cures.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-226-31653-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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