A humbling reminder of the dog’s remarkable spirit and intelligence in the face, even, of human cruelty.
A consummate and loving tribute to canines as well as a comprehensive history, seamlessly blending facts, anecdotes, and ideas.
Though rigorously unsentimental, Derr (Dog’s Best Friend, 1997, etc.) infuses his text with loving concern and quiet outrage at how dogs were, and still are, treated. Since the first dogs crossed the Bering Strait with their human companions between 35,000 and 12,000 years ago, dogs have participated in the settlement of the continent. They helped hunt, were a food source (even Lewis and Clark ate dogs), guarded settlements, and did humans’ dirty work. The Spanish trained dogs to kill the enemy in battle, slave-owners used them to hunt runaway slaves, and in pre-industrial times dogs were beasts of burden who pulled heavy carts and worked tread mills. The Enlightenment changed attitudes—dogs began to be valued for their character, loyalty, and company—but abuses continued, ameliorated somewhat by the activism of newly established humane societies. In the wake of Darwinism and a growing social obsession with pure blood, pedigree dogs were declared superior, despite mongrels’ proven record of accomplishment. Derr includes stories of heroic dogs like Satan, who in WWI dodged bullets to take a message that saved a garrison under fire; the Alaskan sled team whose 1920s “serum run” saved a town from diphtheria; and dogs in the Pacific who detected hidden Japanese snipers in WWII. Though physical cruelty to dogs is less socially acceptable today, Derr warns that they still endure abusive treatment. He also deplores the health consequences of inbreeding, the lack of space in cities where dogs can run, and the inept training of working dogs.
A humbling reminder of the dog’s remarkable spirit and intelligence in the face, even, of human cruelty.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-86547-631-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: North Point/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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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