A must for every home or institutional collection. (11 illustrations)
Historical survey by a rare-book librarian of the defining epochs and events leading to both the destruction and proliferation of libraries.
Rebutting the stereotype of a silent sanctum in which mousy librarians maintain perfect order, the author reminds us how chaotic and impermanent these repositories of accumulated knowledge are. He contends that a library, “a world, complete and uncompletable,” draws its reason for existence from the culture in which it arises, a situation as liable to shifting social currents as the edifice housing it is subject to weather and other disasters, both natural and man-made. Battles follows the notorious “biblioclasms” of past ages, from the burning of the library at Alexandria to the bonfires of the Nazis, who destroyed more than 100 million books. He asserts that “most books are bad, very bad in fact,” and bemoans their inability to surmount the babble of their times. He does not, however, suggest that their fates are deserved; rather, that an ironic result of gathering so many volumes in a single place is that it makes them ready targets for revisionist fervor. Many small collections in obscure and scattered locations, on the other hand, ensure that more books will survive the onslaught of marauding princes, vengeful dictators, and fanatical clerics. Among the other ironies the author points out: many of the scrolls in Herculaneum survived the volcano of a.d. 79 because they burned, thereby making the charred remains amenable to spectral photography, which rendered their ancient text visible, while intact scrolls of the same age have long since crumbled into dust. Battles points out that books have always been an ephemeral experience: older manuscripts and proscribed texts were often recycled or reused, the imperfect palimpsests still visible to later readers. Yet he seems to lament the onset of the digital age, with its 800-million-page archive, by attesting that libraries now exist in a “state of flux which is indistinguishable from a state of crisis.”
A must for every home or institutional collection. (11 illustrations)Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-393-02029-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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