Baker, author of half a dozen books (Bad Guys, 1996; Sex Lives; 1994, Cops, 1985; etc.) has given us the frank, often brutal views of cops and criminals on life and the criminal justice system. Here, he offers the similarly direct perspectives of prosecutors on the same subject. Baker relies on interviews with dozens of prosecutors from rural and suburban jurisdictions and big cities. Prosecutors in all settings have strikingly similar experiences: Though the majority of cases are routine, they present human nature at its worst, and prosecutors, after years of exposure to this stuff, take a grim and often cynical view of human beings (one assistant district attorney’s description of the job as “a lot like being on an assembly line” is particularly memorable). Baker probes his subjects’ outlooks on why they became prosecutors (hint: not money or prestige), the hardball trial tactics, the tremendous workloads, the often insane pressures of the job, and the enormous power that prosecutors have to transform peoples’ lives. The picture that emerges is gritty but often admirable: Baker’s subjects seem generally dedicated, mostly concerned with using their power wisely and fairly, and usually mindful of the criminal justice system’s many imperfections. But they’re human, and by interviewing members of the defense bar and judges, Baker is able to expose prosecutorial self-righteousness and pusillanimity when he finds it, with most sins coming under the rubrics of the “big head” (arrogance and abuse of the prosecutor’s discretionary power) and the “weak backbone” (caving in to political pressure). In the end, though a few of Baker’s subjects like the job well enough, most are driven to seek more sedate employment by what can only be called burnout: exhaustion, disgust with the endless parade of evil, and a desire to see good in human beings again all play their part. Stark and direct, Baker’s interviewees present a compelling, unvarnished look at the grim reality of America’s criminal justice culture.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-83156-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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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