Fans of medical mysteries will find scores of EIS case histories to slake their appetites in this meticulous history.
Pendergrast (Mirror Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection, 2003, etc.) provides an exhaustive account of the “shoe-leather epidemiologists” who trek to the world’s troubled spots when a serious or unusual disease strikes.
The author digs deep into the archives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to produce an impressive, occasionally awe-inspiring narrative about the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. The organization is comprised of idealistic young men and women who sign up for two years of training and field work, postings during which they can face Ebola in Africa, bird flu in Asia or other more routine clusters of salmonella food poisoning in America. When EIS was founded in 1951, it was a haven for doctors seeking to avoid the draft for the Korean War, and EIS recruits were envisioned as first responders in the case of biowarfare. The early EIS decades were largely devoted to infectious outbreaks—bat rabies, Asian flu, oyster-borne hepatitis, etc.—and EIS sleuthing then and now looks at patient histories and environmental clues, often conducting case-control studies. Pendergrast does not gloss over the moral shortcomings of the early years—the infamous Tuskegee study, vaccines tested on prisoners or institutionalized children—nor does he ignore the role of bureaucratic in-fighting and politics. The author celebrates EIS’s successes and occasional triumphs—like the eradication of smallpox—and the commitment, intelligence and passion of its trainees and alums.
Fans of medical mysteries will find scores of EIS case histories to slake their appetites in this meticulous history.Pub Date: April 13, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-15-101120-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
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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