A jaunty glimpse into the cities and countryside of Central America from the point of view of a traveler well-equipped to...
The British explorer’s latest trek takes him by foot from Mexico to the edge of Colombia.
The book's title might be misleading, as Wood (Walking the Himalayas, 2016, etc.) notes in the introduction: this trip was “solely a journey through Central America.” The author was joined by Alberto Caceres, a recently divorced Mexican friend who had “never been in a jungle, or walked further than a few miles.” Despite a few blisters, however, and more than a few complaints, the chatty Caceres, who could “charm the hind legs off a donkey,” kept up the pace. Sometimes on uncharted paths and often on major highways where the main obstacles they faced were drunken drivers and thoughtless truckers, the two covered 1,800 miles in a little over four months. Wood excels at verbal snapshots of the differences among the countries, and he avoids dwelling on the monotony of many of the days in favor of describing more exciting ones spent diving into caves where they discovered Mayan skulls, climbing unnamed pyramids, eating termites (“bitter and woody”) during a lesson on jungle survival, getting caught in quicksand, and being escorted through the gang-ruled barrios of Honduras' San Pedro Sula, which until recently “held the dubious honor of being known as the murder capital of the world.” While this means that readers only get tantalizing glimpses into the author’s experience, it also makes for brisk reading. The narrative culminates with a trek through the jungles of Panama's Darién Gap, an area ruled by drug lords that has, during the past 20 years, “swallowed up more people than perhaps anywhere else in the western hemisphere.” Fortunately, Wood and Caceres made it through the “brutal, skin-tearing, lung-busting jungle climbs” with nothing worse than some nasty spider bites.
A jaunty glimpse into the cities and countryside of Central America from the point of view of a traveler well-equipped to compare life there to other countries around the globe.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2749-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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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