Intent on undertaking an audacious open-air exploit, but lacking even rudimentary camping skills or basic gear, an adventure-travel writer recounts his unconventional trek to the mysterious Machu Picchu.
Teamed with an irascible Australian guide and a group of Quechua-speaking mule tenders, Adams (Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet, 2009) journeyed through the wilds of Peru to unravel the persistent puzzle surrounding the Lost City of the Incas: What was its purpose? The author deftly weaves together two story lines, each peopled with striking characters and astonishing landscapes. Told in alternating chapters, Adams details the life and times of Hiram Bingham III, the outsized early-20th-century explorer credited with “discovering” Machu Picchu, whose reputation has recently suffered due to an archaeological controversy. Overlaid on this extensively researched and entertaining historical framework is the author’s humorous recounting of his personal and physical transformation during the demanding trek. Following one extremely strenuous hike, Adams confronted a vacation dilemma. He could either jump on a train or walk another six miles with his 60-pound pack filled with books. “This might be my only chance to hike like a serious adventurer, to carry my own pack like a traveler,” he writes, “not heave it onto the luggage rack like a tourist.” Coupled with his keen eye for the absurd and his knowledge of the travel industry, the author gleefully remarks on the excesses of the increasingly commercialized adventure-travel business, while never hesitating to point out his own foibles. A funny, erudite retrospection offering more subtle and lasting rewards than the usual package tour.
Pub Date: June 30, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-525-95224-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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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