by Mark Canter and Jason Porath ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2010
Somewhere in this Vook is a great rock movie waiting to be made. But for lovers of rock lore, this will do until it comes...
Oral history of the making of an iconic rock album.
Canter is described in the meta-material of this e-book as “best friend” of guitarist Slash for 30 years. Who better to tell the story of Guns N’ Roses than an eyewitness (and obsessive collector of memorabilia) who knew the guitar hero since fifth grade? But to say Canter wrote this Behind the Music–style account of the origins of the best-known and beloved version of the Los Angeles band is, perhaps, a bit of an exaggeration. The videos Porath shot featuring snippets of interviews with three of the original band members (absent Axl Rose, of course, and Izzy Stradlin), several girlfriends, managers, hangers-on and employees of Geffen records, as well as with Canter himself, are actually the basis for much of the text. In fact, sometimes the text takes the form of a transcription of the videos. This makes the e-book occasionally redundant, particularly when several interviewees tell the same story on tape and in the text. But redundancy can’t make the story of these unusual rockers and their brilliant first record anything less than riveting. Simultaneously glam, grungy, metal and punk, GNR made their own rules and stuck to them ferociously. They lived hand-to-mouth on the streets of L.A., sacrificing normalcy, security and safety for an art that they created collectively. And for a moment in the mid-1980s, they were rock ’n’ roll because of songs from the album like the ubiquitous anthems “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child of Mine.”
Somewhere in this Vook is a great rock movie waiting to be made. But for lovers of rock lore, this will do until it comes out.Pub Date: June 25, 2010
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Vook
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
More by Mark Canter
BOOK REVIEW
by Mark Canter
BOOK REVIEW
by Mark Canter
BOOK REVIEW
by Mark Canter
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
More by Daniel Kahneman
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.