A thorough disclosure on today's airlines and the passengers who use them—best read while still on the ground.
An informative, revealing examination of the business of flying.
Aviation consultant Gerchick, former chief counsel for the Federal Aviation Administration, pulls no punches in this highly researched exposé on the state of air travel today. He probes behind the scenes to give readers a critical and edifying take on aviation, answering a variety of questions: e.g., Why was free food eliminated from flights? Why were baggage fees adopted? What do pilots really do behind that locked cockpit door when the plane is on autopilot? Gerchick distinguishes what's not worth worrying about when flying—that the airplane will break or turbulence will cause it to crash, that safety regulations are lax—from what is: The air traffic controller or pilot could indeed be asleep, it's true that small commuter planes are not as safe as large commercial flights, and birds in the flight path are a perennial problem. He addresses many other issues, as well, explaining the endless fare wars among airlines and the reduction in comfort levels for economy-class passengers, assessing whether the perks of flying first or business class are worth the steep sticker prices. An illuminating and occasionally disgusting chapter on what can make an airline passenger sick will have many readers reaching for the hand sanitizer. Gerchick also discusses frequent flyer miles, why the FAA is so slow to make changes in regulations, and what that confirmation code tells the pilot and flight attendants about who you are. It affects "the way you're treated and the service you get," he explains, "advertising to everyone where you stand in the airline's pecking order." Frequent fliers and once-a-year vacationers alike will benefit from the insights Gerchick provides on an industry that only gets more congested and expensive as the years progress.
A thorough disclosure on today's airlines and the passengers who use them—best read while still on the ground.Pub Date: June 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-393-08110-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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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